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25 Litig. 61 (1998-1999)
Preparing Yourself for the Deposition

handle is hein.journals/laba25 and id is 217 raw text is: Trial Notebook Preparing Yourself for the Deposition If you don't know where you're going, when you get there, you'll be lost. -Yogi Berra Angus gave a talk to the City Bar Asso- ciation on depositions, and I went, hop- ing to pick up something I could use in an article. The most important part of taking a deposition, he said, is not how you handle the witness or even the lawyer on the other side. It's how you handle your- self before you ever walk in the room. First, you've got to prepare a simple plan-in writing-that covers what you want to accomplish when you start asking questions. Otherwise, in the ten- sion of the situation, you are undoubt- edly going to overlook something important. Second, just like a team getting ready to play an important game, you've got to go through a series of steps that will prepare you to get what you want. Unfortunately, the only deposition planning most lawyers do is just to look over the file for a few minutes, jot down a couple of notes, then figure they will simply ask some questions and see what they get. That's a recipe for missing some- by James W. McElhaney Senior Editor thing important in almost every deposi- tion you take, Angus said. Truth is, most lawyers spend more time getting a witness ready when they are defending a deposition than they spend getting themselves ready when they are taking a deposition. I really admire Brian Tracy, the time-management expert. He has a say- ing you should take to heart: 'If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.' So I developed a way to brainstorm my tactics and goals before every deposition I took. After preparing myself for deposi- tions that way for some time, I realized I could streamline the process by mak- ing two simple check lists. First is a whole set of different objectives-some that go together and others that are alternatives. Like a play book for a football team, it's a list of various things you can try to accom- plish when you take the deposition. Part reminder list and part series of options, it is something to look at every time you get ready for a deposition. After you've settled on your game plan-thought about what you want to do and how to do it-there is a list of steps to go through before the deposi- tion. Those steps are how you get ready to play the game, said Angus as he dis- tributed his hand-out. Me, I was delighted. Angus was pass- ing out a ready-made article. If he would only fill in his lists with a few comments (which is exactly what he did), I would have practically nothing to do. Here are the two lists with the notes I took on his comments: The first list is based in part on ideas in The Art and Law of Depositions (1994), a course book and audio tape set by John E. Moye of Moye, Giles, O'Keefe, Vermeire & Gorrell in Den- ver, CO, and published by The Profes- sional Education Group of Min- netonka, MN. The second list covers the steps Angus goes through to get himself ready for a deposition. Objectives in Taking Depositions-The Different Plays You Can Run 1. Learn the Facts. While you want to get information in any discovery deposition, you should always learn as much as you can before LITIGATION Spring 1999 61 Volume 25 Number 3

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