Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Spine-chilling flashback

I'm getting ready for a trial that will happen in a month or two. Doing the work early is a remnant of my days as a civil lawyer when I didn't ever dare rush things last-minute, because I knew critical and beady eyes were on me and looking for mistakes (at $400 an hour, that's no surprise).

So now I do all my notices and motions well in advance, I go through my evidence and talk to the cops involved well before trial. I'm sort of grateful for the training in that regard, it makes trial much less stressful.

But this case gave me another flashback because a civil lawsuit was filed between the victim and the defendant. And civil lawsuits means depositions.

A deposition, for those of you who don't know, is where two lawyers (or more) sit at opposite ends of the table and ask inane questions of civilians for up to six hours at a time. Those questions need to have no relation to the lawsuit, by the way. And for every lawsuit, the more depositions the better.

The one I'm reading now is about, in effect, a car accident. The depo lasted five hours and is 184 pages long. I will tell you that the lawyer did not get around to asking about the actual incident until page 77.

But at least I know where the witness went to school, got to hear about his facial skin condition, and the names of the co-workers with whom he discussed this incident.

And none of it was as fun as this one.

The thing is, I have five more of these danged depos to read. Where's my second chair when I need her?

2 comments:

  1. Link you provided to the YouTube deposition is
    incorrect.

    The correct link is:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7RIM42ZX_M&feature=related

    ReplyDelete

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