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Drafting a good deposition summary is an extremely important part of the legal process. Why is it so important? Deposition summaries are essential to the process of discovering, obtaining, and submitting evidence that will be used in a case. Additionally, it can also aid in the jogging of a witness’s memory on the stand.
What is a Deposition Summary?
A deposition summary is a condensed, objective, and accurate clerical synopsis of the main points that are included in the deposition transcript. But what is a deposition transcript? A deposition transcript is a written document created during a deposition that records all the questions and answers by the attorney, self-represented party, or witness.
In simple terms, the deposition transcript is the whole version of the recorded question and answering sessions by the attorney, self-represented party, or witness. The deposition summary is the shortened version that highlights all of the important parts.
Why Do You Need a Deposition Summary?
We already know that deposition summaries are vital to help with court cases. But why else are they needed? You would be surprised at the other benefits they can bring.
- They save time: Because deposition summaries are more concise and only cover the highlights, they save a lot of time in court.
- They save money: It is no secret that attorneys make a lot of money and their fees are billed by the hour. Since your attorney will not have to paw through whole documents to find what they need, it will save you money.
Now that you understand what a deposition summary is, how they are useful, and why legal teams draft and use them, we can look at how they are put together. Though it is a tedious process, it will pay off for everyone involved. Here are 5 important facts you need to know when writing deposition summaries.
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Know the Type of Deposition Summary You Need
There are a few different types of deposition summaries and is it important to know which ones you need because deposition summaries need to be accurate, unbiased, and not have any hinted meanings other than what the person was recorded as saying.
Here is a breakdown of the different types of deposition summaries:
- Page-Line: Page-line dispositions are thought of as the most popular type of deposition summaries. However, it is really time-consuming to put one together. In order to draft a page-line deposition summary, the person preparing has to thoroughly summarize each relevant piece of information and notate the page and line where it appears in the original document.
- Chronological: A chronological deposition summary highlights the timeline of events of a case. The document should be laid out by times and events. This will come in handy when proving where someone was at a time and place.
- Topic By Topic: This type of deposition is usually considered the easiest, quickest, and cheapest. It pretty much resembles an outline where facts are summarized in a concise and easy to read manner. However, the drawbacks are that they be may be less organized and more difficult to understand.
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There is a lot of Reading
This should come as a no brainer, but you have to actually read or listen to the written notes or audio in order to start drafting the deposition summary. Pay close attention and don’t rush. You have to have a clear understanding of the case.
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Next, You Annotate
The process of annotating involves going through the transcript as many times as you would need in order to mark and/or highlight the key points you feel need to be in the deposition summary. You must be absolutely sure that anything that is left out is trival and will not affect the outcome of the case.
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Summarize
This is the step where the key points from the annotation process are turned into one of the above types of summary depositions. Organization is crucial here as the ones that read the deposition summary must be able to quickly understand the key parts of the deposition summary.
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Review, Review, Review
As stated before and cannot be stated enough, deposition summaries must be concise, unbiased, and easy to scan and understand. That’s why it is extremely important to review as many times as you can before submitting. Make sure that you have everything in there that is important. You may have to review all of the documents in order to get the deposition summary exactly right.
Since deposition summaries are so vital to legal cases, it is really important to have a good legal team drafting them. However, it doesn’t hurt for regular joes to know what goes into them and why they are important. You many gain a better opinion of your legal team for it.