The information your attorney will need will vary depending on the details of your case. Make sure that you have a clear understanding of exactly what your attorney needs. Here are a few examples.

For a divorce, the basics will always include date of cohabitation, date of marriage, births of any children, dates when jobs of both parties stopped and started, dates of any separations, and dates when major assets such as houses were acquired and sold.

For a contract dispute, your attorney will need the dates of all meetings and phone calls with a summary of what was said, the dates that any draft contracts, notes, emails or other written records were created, and the exact dates, times and circumstances in which you or the other party signed any formal documents.

For a boundary dispute, you will need the date that each party acquired their land, the names of the previous owners of each piece of land and the dates of ownership of those previous owners if known, the dates of any conversations about the disputed land, and the dates that any structures or fencing on or next to the disputed land were erected.

Resist the common temptation to cut out the boring stuff that happened before things really heated up. Most people when talking about stressful events will concentrate on the things that seem the most upsetting (the day that a spouse left the children unsupervised, that the would-be business partner’s check bounced, or that the neighbor put up the “no trespassing” signs).

But the background to any of these events is at least as important, and in many cases more important legally, than the fireworks that came later. So start with the earliest background: meeting your spouse, deciding to start the business venture that eventually went disastrously wrong, the first time you heard about the real estate you now wish you had not bought.

A vague description of events is not going to be useful to your attorney. Don’t use shorthand or general descriptions of what happened or what was said.

Instead of: “I always put my children before my career,” say “In April 2018 I took a 10% pay cut so that I could be home by 3 PM every day when the children got home from school.”

Instead of: “He told me that he would pay me back with some money he was expecting soon,” say “He told me that he was going to get about $75,000 from his father’s estate by the end of the year and could pay me back by August.”

You might not have records (or a steel-trap memory) that let you come up with a list of exact dates. If you have to, just tell your attorney approximately when something occurred. For example:

“This happened just a few weeks before my sister’s college graduation in mid- June 2002. I remember that it was after all this happened that I had to cancel our travel reservations.”

“Although I do not have these phone records, I know that these conversations took place before January 2004 because every time we talked he was still promising to pay me the money by January 1st.”

The information you give us needs to be precise and accurate. So read through the chronology a few times yourself before giving it to your attorney.

If you aren’t very sure about dates (did that happen on Christmas Day 2018 or 2018?) check your records again. If you still can’t be sure that some of the information you have given is right, note these doubts prominently on the chronology itself.