Evan Schaeffer on The Dangers of Winging It in Depositions
Evan Schaeffer at the Illinois Trial Practice Weblog has a great post on The Dangers of Winging It in Depositions. Some of the questions Evan asks:
- What are the goals of the deposition? Are you merely gathering information or can you also get helpful admissions from the witness? How do you plan to achieve your goals?
- Do you plan to exhaust the witness's memory on certain issues? Which ones? Why those issues and not others? When you're finished, will the witness really be pinned down, or have you left some open doors for him to wiggle through later?
- Have you reviewed the pleadings? If not, why not? Have you looked at the discovery responses and documents? Which ones do you plan to use at the deposition, and why?
- Have you considered the way the witness might fit into your plan for trial? Have you even thought about trial? How will the witness support or detract from your legal claims or defenses?
Good stuff, Evan. Check out the entire post. He has a good list of questions to review when preparing for a deposition. An interesting comment on the post also states that the people most likely to make mistakes are those with too much experience as they get overconfident. I can understand that.
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