Vent: A judge's throwaway comment about my deposition style made me completely rewrite how I prep witnesses

I used to spend 2 hours walking witnesses through every document line by line, but after a judge said my witness looked 'rehearsed and robotic' in a breach of contract case last month, I switched to only doing a 30-minute overview and letting them answer naturally on the stand - has anyone else gotten a piece of feedback that made them scrap their whole process?

2 comments

2 Comments

claire_fisher418d agoMost Upvoted

Totally took your same advice after a mediator told me my client sounded like they were reading off a script. I now just do a quick 10 minute chat about keeping cool and not rambling. Witnesses come off way more human and juries actually believe them. It's scary at first, but it works so much better lol.

nora5358d ago

Cracked up reading this because I literally had my own witness prep disaster last month where I told my client to just be natural and she froze so bad she asked the opposing attorney to repeat every question four times lol. @claire_fisher41 you're dead on about the 10 minute prep thing though, I started doing the same and it's night and day better than the hour long rehearsals I used to do where everyone sounds like a robot. I still get nervous every time I let someone wing it but the juries definitely seem to buy into the messy real responses way more than the polished fake ones. Man if only I could take my own advice about being less awkward in court myself.