Codified Rules of Virginia Evidence on the Horizon?

By: Erin McNeill. This was posted Tuesday, October 4th, 2011

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Virginia State Capitol

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This encouraging news certainly brightened my day as a practicing Virginia litigator: 

Virginia Lawyer’s Weekly has posted an article indicating movement to codify Virginia Rules of Evidence. 

Virginia has long considered codification of its rules of evidence, but previously, the proposed rules never made it past Virginia’s Supreme Court. As discussed in the Virginia Lawyer’s Weekly article, codified rules would make it far easier to argue objections to evidence in real time during a trial or plea in bar (link goes to a case explaining Virginia’s plea in bar). Plus, key evidentiary considerations, such as whether a piece of favorable evidence will be admissible and why, will rely more on codified rules and less on hours of expensive legal research to find just the right case, allowing parties more certainty and less expense as they evaluate cases set to go trial. 

This news definitely will give me something to look forward to in the 2012 legislative session of Virginia’s General Assembly.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 4th, 2011 at 11:26 am and is filed under state courts, Trial Tactics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Comments:

  • We certainly have our own Bunky Miller to thank, and many of his colleagues around Virginia, who toiled so tirelessly for years, mostly in anonymity, to bring to fruition the Guide to Evidence in Virginia under the auspices of the Boyd-Graves Conference/VBA and upon which the rules recently approved by the Supreme Court are based.

    Pierce

    Posted by: Pierce Rucker | October 5th, 2011 at 10:31 am
     

  • That is awesome. I order the Guide to Evidence in Virginia every year and take it to every trial. Hopefully this legislation gets passed and the book becomes even more valuable.

    Posted by: Buckley Warden | October 5th, 2011 at 1:16 pm
     

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