If you’re a lawyer, paralegal, or otherwise involved in the legal profession, no doubt you have had to deal with plenty of deposition transcripts. A deposition is a sworn, out of court testimony, usually conducted by a lawyer or attorney regarding a case. Anyone involved with a case, like a defendant or witness, can be called on to give a deposition, and there are many procedures that must be followed.
However, due to their conversational and lengthy nature, deposition transcripts tend to be quite large and unwieldy. When you’re presenting or making your case to a judge or jury, you don’t want them to have to sit down with a 200-page booklet containing an entire deposition transcript, you want them to be able to sit down with it and quickly and efficiently absorb the relevant facts and information. The keyword here is “relevant” – depositions are, essentially, a form of summarizing large amounts of information to bring out the pertinent, relevant facts that can help your case or show your client in a better light.
Understanding Depositions
In order to hire the right person to summarize your deposition transcripts, you must first fully understand the different types of summaries and what the process entails. A proper deposition summary must be unbiased and accurate, first and foremost. You must always hire someone with experience and a strong understanding of legal ethics, as it’s critically important that facts and information is presented accurately and in an impartial and fair manner.
There are a few different purposes for depositions, with the main two being used for discovery or preservation/evidence. Discovery depositions are used, often under subpoenas, to allow lawyers or attorneys access to facts and information through questioning witnesses or other involved parties. Usually, they start with broad questions and narrow it down to specifics.
Preservation/evidence depositions are usually used by a lawyer when they want to preserve evidence from someone who might not be able to testify in court. Evidence depositions lean more towards preserving specific evidence to be used in court, while discovery depositions are used for fact-finding. However, there are many similarities between the two, and there are other uses for depositions, as well.
Hiring the right person will depend on what you intend to use the deposition for. You’ll want to hire someone with legal experience and the knowledge to understand the differences between discovery and preservation/evidence depositions.
Types of Depositions
Before making your choice and choosing who to hire to produce the summary, it’s also important to understand the various different types of deposition summaries. The main three types used are:
Page-Line
Page-line summaries are the most common type, but can also be costly and take longer. These summaries entail going through the document and notating the specific page and line where important and relevant facts to the case can be found.
Topic-by-Topic
Topic-by-topic summaries are less detailed and specific than page-line but are also easier and cheaper to produce. The goal of this type of summary is to simply present the relevant facts and topics in an easy to understand manner.
Chronological
Chronological summaries attempt to list all facts and activities of relevant parties in the order they happened, to establish a timeline. Knowing the “who, what, where, and when” of the facts is critical, and chronological summaries play a key role in documenting who was where at what time.
Making Your Choice
Now that you have a more complete understanding of what a deposition summary is and what the final product will look like, you are ready to hire someone to complete the process. These summaries are often outsourced in this manner, as it’s a tedious process that takes a lot of time. It’s often more efficient and economical to pay someone to do it, rather than do it yourself or have paralegal staff do it.
You’ll want someone working on your deposition transcript who is:
Experienced
Experience is key, as it is a process that gets better over time. Try and find a law firm that has worked on many cases for hundreds of different firms.
Professional
Depositions are important legal documents that can have a profound impact on people’s lives. You want to find a dedicated professional who understands the responsibility of preparing an accurate, proper summary.
To make sure that you are hiring the right experienced and professional service, make sure they have the following attributes:
- Many years in business and good reviews
- Available 24/7 for updates or concerns
- The ability to handle large volume work
- Secure, HIPAA-compliant servers and information technology
- Able to adapt to your specific needs
- Provide conflict of interest checks
Don’t risk your cases, income, and client’s freedom by outsourcing your deposition transcripts to an inexperienced or unprofessional firm. Take the time to find the right people to summarize your transcripts, and you can save time, money, and effort, as well as end up with a superior, easy to read product.