Entries by Stephanie Mitchell

The Sound of Pursuit: Rules of the game when Working with Attorneys

What’s attorney-client privilege and work product? When should you deliver written vs. oral reports? Should you document all witness interviews? What information is discoverable?

Join Hal Humphreys and John Nardizzi with their guest, defense attorney Jennifer Sunderland, as they talk about what private investigators need to know about rules of professional conduct when they work with attorneys.

The Sound of Pursuit 4.10.23 The Innocence Network Conference

Hal Humphreys and John Nardizzi, a Boston-area investigator and author, reflect on work, joy, and the movie “The Menu.” Sometimes the pressures to “succeed” in a career can make us forget the love that carried us into a calling in the first place. How can we find the joy again?

Hal Humphreys (“The Beard”) and John Nardizzi (“The Dome”) host The Sound of Pursuit podcast each week. Join us for the live broadcast here, or drop by any time and check out the recorded version.

Investigating Civil Cases

Lawsuits are war. There’s a lot of money at stake. These are often big, complex cases with a lot of moving parts, involving far-flung witnesses and deep-dive research. Pursuit editor Hal Humphreys and Boston PI & attorney John Nardizzi talk about how to work civil cases like toxic torts, harassment cases, medical malpractice, and wrongful death suits. They can be a private investigator’s bread and butter.

Hal Humphreys (“The Beard”) and John Nardizzi (“The Dome”) host The Sound of Pursuit podcast each week.

A Swiss Army Knife of Tools for Skip Tracing & Due Diligence

Avi Klein is a private investigator in Oakland, California with a law degree from USC. He’s also a former investigative journalist in Washington D.C. who covered the finance, defense, and national security industries. Klein is now managing partner of The Klein Group, a firm that specializes in litigation support, due diligence for investors, locating heirs, and defending contested wills.

Check out Klein’s LinkedIn feed: He shares great information about due diligence, background investigations, and skip tracing. In one post, he writes about what he calls “real locates”—assignments to find people who are tough to trace, like the unhoused, recent college grads, or people who change addresses a lot. “A real locate puts the investigative professional to the proof,” he writes. “You need a Swiss army knife full of tools for each circumstance.”

I love that phrase. It captures the investigator’s skill set perfectly. In the webinar, Avi Klein and I will talk about some tools that should be in a PI’s Swiss army knife. —Hal Humphreys

The Sound of Pursuit: Gilbert King’s “Bone Valley”

Hal hosts author Gilbert King, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Devil in the Grove,” led to the exonerations of four Black men falsely accused of rape in 1949. King is also writer, producer, and host of “Bone Valley,” a new true-crime podcast that uncovers astonishing details of the wrongful murder conviction of Leo Schofield — and evidence pointing to the real killer. It’s riveting storytelling and dogged reporting, a powerful combination.

King spoke with Hal about reinvestigating cold cases and what it means to him to illuminate injustice — on behalf of Schofield and others.