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That moment I realized my deposition prep was completely backwards
I spent 3 years preparing witnesses by drilling them on every possible question for hours. Then a senior partner watched me do it and said 'you're making them scared of their own answers.' He showed me his method: just focus on the 3 main story points and let them talk naturally. I tried it on a $2 million contract dispute case in Houston last month. The witness actually relaxed and the other side's lawyer couldn't rattle them. Now I wonder how many cases I made harder than they had to be. Any other litigators find out they were over-preparing witnesses the hard way?
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drew_palmer832mo ago
That whole "I overthink texts to friends" thing is actually closer to this than people realize. So let me ask you something specific - when you switched to that 3 point method, did you have to fight the urge to jump in and correct the witness when they started going off script? I tried scaling back prep once and my guy started volunteering information about unrelated contract amendments. The partner told me to let him talk but I was sweating bullets thinking about what the plaintiff's attorney would do with that. How do you know when natural talking crosses into dangerous territory?
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