Have you ever wondered whether there’s something you could do to prepare before you meet with your client for deposition prep? You bet there is! Tune in as we talk about how to look at the file for a deeper analysis and answer three really important questions.
We’re going to talk about helping you scope a plan to prepare you before that client testimony preparation meeting. In my experience and most people’s experiences, trial happens, but it’s pretty few and far between. Most of our legwork and our day-to-day stuff is dealing with depositions.
Hopefully, this will help you create a plan for having a deeper analysis of your client’s case, and the testimony they need to provide in your case. That way, you can have smoother preparation meetings and your clients will be impressed and appreciative that you took the time to go back through and get the events down. Ultimately, this creates a lot of trust between you and the client whenever you can repeat events back to them or refresh their own memory. It also helps uncover damages when you’re working through that part of the preparation meeting.
In this episode, you will hear:
- Reasons to prepare for client deposition
- When to start your review
- What to review and 3 questions to keep in mind
- What is the target?
- What areas can be improved and what are things that are maybe a weakness in the case?
- What’s missing?
- How to gather up depositions
- Doing a double background check
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Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick: [00:00:00] Have you ever wondered, man, is there something I could do to prepare before I meet with my client for deposition prep? You bet there is. Tune in as we talk about how to look at the file for a deeper analysis and answer three really important questions.
Welcome to trial lawyer prep. What if you could hang out with trial lawyers and jury consultants, ask them about connecting with clients and juries more effectively? Then take strategies, tactics, and insights to increase your success. Each week, Elizabeth Larrick takes an in depth look at how to regain touch with the everyday world, understand the emotional burden of your clients and juries, and use focus groups in this process. Elizabeth is an experienced trial lawyer, consultant, and founder of Larrick Law Firm in Austin, Texas. Her goal is to help you connect with juries and clients in order to improve your abilities in the courtroom. Now, here’s Elizabeth.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of [00:01:00] Trial Lawyer Prep with me, Elizabeth Larrick. Today in this episode, we are going to continue our mini series on planning and preparation.
We’ve had kind of a three episode series. The first one talked about year end review and how to look forward and prepare for the next year. Our last episode talked about focus groups and designing a plan, either a big overall plan for your office. We’re going to focus group three times for every case, or maybe you’ve got one really big case in your office and you want to scheme out how best to plan, or maybe you’ve got a case that’s going to trial.
It’s going and you got to get ready for trial. So we talked about that. If you missed it, go ahead and catch that last episode. And then today’s episode, we’re going to talk about helping you plan. Scope a plan to prepare you before that client testimony preparation meeting. The focus of today’s episode is really going to be about depositions.
In my [00:02:00] experience, and in most people’s experience, trial happens, but it’s pretty few and far between. So most of our legwork, most of our day to day stuff is dealing in deposition. So today we’re going to talk about deposition preparation, but there’s nothing to say you couldn’t apply this for trial. And I promise we will do a trial one as well.
To walk through how to get you ready to prepare your client for trial. But today let’s take a step back and focus on deposition. I kind of want to break this into three main parts and that is what I suggest you review for yourself when I suggest doing that and why. Let’s start with the why because this is something that’s going to add more time.
You’re going to have to take some time to do this. And my experience. When I first started to do it, it did take a lot of time, but as I started to do it over and over again, things got quicker, it doesn’t take me as long, I know what I’m looking [00:03:00] for, and bigger cases, it’s just going to take longer, shorter cases, shorter time.
Let’s jump into why take extra time. What is that prep? How to make that plan? First why it would be anticipating deposition targets, right? We know that our client is target number one. They’re walking around with that bullseye on their back because it’s easy. And so we know that this deposition is basically Open season, right?
They’re going to be able to ask any question. So want to make sure we can anticipate that and be able to prepare our client. The other thing is you want to really have a clear memory on events because you are going to have to refresh your client on those events. A lot of times deposition takes a little bit of time to get there.
Maybe it’s a year, maybe it’s two years. Sometimes it’s even three years. Clients have packed away those painful memories and put it up in a closet and And now you’re going to ask them to drag it right back out, and I guarantee you they’re not going to drag it out until you ask them to do that. So it’s [00:04:00] helpful for you to have a really good, clear idea on the events and what you’re going to ask them about.
And doing this review is going to help you refresh your memory so you can help refresh the client’s memory. The other why would be seeing areas the client needs help. We spend so much time with our clients that sometimes we become a little bit blind to their weaknesses or maybe some things that would be problematic for testimony.
These are not bad people. They’re our clients. But that doesn’t mean that they may be perfect at giving testimony. Rarely find people who are perfect at testimony. So having that analysis, time, helps you, right? You’d be able to spot those areas where maybe they need help. And what I mean by is describing injuries.
Maybe there’s some background issues that you need to talk to them about. And it’s so helpful when you talk to them about it and you have all those details. They really appreciate and it makes them feel so important because you’ve taken that time to go back in and refresh yourself and see those areas that they may need help with at the time.
Another [00:05:00] big why is doing all this work really makes your preparation meetings run so much smoother. You have much more effective use of time and it really helps because instead of having to stop and go look for something, right? So let’s say, oh, we need to remember the date of that injection or the date of that surgery.
You don’t have to stop in the middle and go look for it because that stops your mo, you know, you want to keep. The Moe. And it also makes it look like, hey, you’re the one who’s been dealing with my case for two years and you don’t even know this date. It makes things just go smoother. And ultimately, the client will be much better prepared for the deposition.
Right? You’re going to be in a better place. That’s going to put them in a better place. So those are a couple of big whys, why you’d want to go ahead and spend some extra time doing this. So let’s talk about when. When am I talking about starting some of this review? I like to start three, five, seven days before the deposition prep meetings.
Sometimes it’s flexible based on kind of what’s going on in my schedule, [00:06:00] but the nice thing is when I’m going through and doing this review, I create a memo. So let’s say I have to start it out a week ahead of time. I’m going to make a bunch of notes in there because I know a lot of things are going to happen before I get to pick back up doing my review.
It also gives me time to gather more facts. Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe I need a medical record. Maybe I need to email colleagues and ask them questions. Maybe I need to find extra depositions. It’s going to give me extra time if I start earlier. I also really like to marinate on things and kind of turn it over and make sure I’m catching all the point of views.
Am I catching the defense lawyer’s point of view, the jury’s point of view, the judge’s point of view? And also use this information and kind of refresh the day before and maybe sometimes even the morning before just to look at it again just to make sure I’m going to be super sharp on those details with the client.
Okay, let’s get to the nitty gritty. What am I talking about? What am I suggesting that you review? Let’s start with the thing that you got, which would be your file. We’re talking about [00:07:00] getting some clarity, you know, walking down memory lane here. I like to even go back to the start. Let’s look at our intake notes.
Let’s look at those emails exchanged with the client. Of course, I’m going to also be looking at pleadings. I’m going to be looking at medical records, maybe looking at even call notes that I’ve had with the adjuster, emails with the opposing counsel, refresh on focus group memos, and I really want to pull any questions that maybe are in the focus group memos that the participants had about the case the client needs to answer.
And that’s super helpful. Any other documents that may be in the file? Investigative documents? Photographs? Maybe we’re missing photographs? I always like to make a note. What am I missing? As I’m going through the file and I’m thinking about it and I’m walking through stuff, I always want to keep three questions in my mind.
What is the target? What is the target of the opposing counsel for this deposition? What I mean by that is maybe there’s a [00:08:00] gap in treatment. Well, you know it’s going to be a target. Maybe it’s that they didn’t go to the emergency room right away. Well, that’s going to be a target. Maybe they didn’t tell their doctor about their symptoms, right?
That’s going to be a target. And I like to kind of write those out. But I always want to keep that question, okay, what is the target? I always want to also question where are areas that can be improved and what are things that are maybe a weakness in the case? Just want to write it out. Even if the client’s going to take care of it or not, meaning they’re going to be asked questions about it or not.
I want to make sure that I’m keeping an eye towards, hey, what am I running across and whereas this need to be improved. And then ultimately, like I mentioned earlier, what’s missing. Am I missing pictures? Am I missing medical records? I’m missing information. Or maybe it’s, Stuff about the client. These may be questions that I need to answer before I get to the client preparation meeting.
And maybe there are questions I just ask the client when we get in there. Either way, I always want to keep those three things in my mind as I’m going through the file. One of the things I like to do as well is research the deposition [00:09:00] style of the opposing counsel. And actually reading those depositions, trying to figure out style, tone, and questions.
I find it really helpful to be able to pull actual questions and use those in role play with the client. How do I gather up those depositions? Well, a lot of what I do is with the same players. So I have a lot of those depositions built up in my own personal bank. But I also use lawyer listservs locally and in my jurisdiction to ask, Hey!
Anybody have a deposition taken by this opposing counsel? I’ve got a plaintiff lawyer. I mean, I’ve got a plaintiff deposition coming up. And most people are 100 percent willing to share when it comes to that because it’s just deposition of their client. And that really helps as far as getting your mind set and again, thinking about what is the target?
What do they see as weaknesses? The other thing I like to do is do a double check on background, and that means doing a Google search, doing a social media search of my client, even going so far as doing family members, spouses. I have definitely had [00:10:00] that experience where I’m sitting in a deposition and the defense pulls out pictures from social media that supposed to be private and all of a sudden it’s not.
And turns out they found a loophole. They went through a family member and got into the client’s social media through a family member. So yeah, I hate that surprise. I know the client did too. So let me help you by avoiding that surprise and the pain of that, having that happen to you as well. So do all that extra search.
And that’s an easy thing. If you want to assign that task to administrative person or paralegal, I found sometimes they’re fantastic at that work, finding all the loopholes and stuff like that when it comes to social media and Google searching. So. That’s a good task to give someone, you know, ultimately want to make sure you’re gathering up the full timeline when things happen, the event that happened all the way up to where you are now.
So you want to make sure that you’re not missing anything in your document analysis. It’s your background search to gather all that information up. And so I say that because I like to create a little timeline. [00:11:00] Maybe it’s medical timeline that really helps me get through medical records quickly. And I always want to again, make sure when I’m going through these medical records, is there anything in there that is going to be a target missing information or check the wrong box or sign the consent form.
All those things. And I even like to pull out documents that I know this is going to be a big one. So I pull those documents out already having them ready for when I’m going to role play with the client later on in the prep meeting. That really helps as well, because you don’t have to go back and find that later.
So, we’ve talked about when to start doing it, we’ve talked about why we need to do this, we’ve talked about what to do, and creating this memo, these notes, in order for you to be able to answer those three questions. What is the target here? What is the point of view of the opposing counsel? Where is there room for improvement?
Any weaknesses? And what’s missing? Thank you. Are there holes missing that we need to fill information or things that I need to find out? I hope that this will help you create a [00:12:00] plan for having a deeper analysis of your client’s case and the testimony they need to provide in your case. That way you can have smooth preparation meetings.
Your client will be impressed, but also just appreciative that you took the time to go back through that you’ve got the events down creates a lot of trust between you and the client whenever you can repeat events back to them or refresh their own memory. That also really helps to uncover damages when you’re working through that part of the preparation meeting.
So if you have any questions, please feel free to post them. I’m going to post the three questions in the show notes. And again, thanks for listening. If you found this helpful, please subscribe this podcast on your favorite podcast app, share it, rate it, review it. And I appreciate it. Thanks so [00:13:00] much.
