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As the legal profession and the way we interact with it grows, evolves, and changes over time, the deposition summary has become more and more important. A deposition is a sworn, out-of-court testimony that can be presented in court as a written transcript or summary. Because they can be quite lengthy or wordy, having a succinct deposition summary prepared can be a critical and extremely helpful tool to present a legal case more effectively.
What is a Deposition?
First of all, it’s important to understand what exactly a deposition is. Lawyers and attorneys use depositions to take statements and create transcripts out of court that can then be presented to a judge as part of a legal strategy. The advantage of this is that those present might feel more comfortable or be able to take more time than they would in a courtroom.
There are two basic types of depositions, which are a discovery deposition, and a preservation/evidence deposition:
- Discovery depositions are used to acquire information from those involved in a legal case and may be used on witnesses who were reluctant to testify or required a subpoena.
- Preservation/evidence depositions are used when a lawyer wants to preserve evidence from someone that might not be able to testify in court due to illness or other difficult situations.
Depositions can vary in length from a few pages to massive transcripts hundreds of pages long. For the longer depositions, it’s critical to have a summary you can present to a judge that quickly summarizes and explains the relevant facts in the deposition.
Benefits of Deposition Summaries
It’s important to have a full understanding of facts for anyone involved with the legal process. Not understanding certain terms or documents, like depositions, can lead to adverse decisions on cases that affect real people’s lives. On the other hand, being able to present the facts compellingly and understandably to a judge can make a huge difference in people’s lives.
Deposition summaries are a critical means to influence cases in a way that will provide a more desirable outcome. They save time, leading to a more efficient and streamlined process in the courtroom. In addition, they allow you to tell your story and the facts as you see them in a more profound and relatable way.
For the legal team, having a nicely formatted and easily browsable deposition summary available facilitates an easier pre-trial process. Getting ready for trial takes a lot of time, money, and effort, and having the summaries available will help the legal team move with greater effectiveness and urgency.
Finally, deposition and witness summaries are critical to the process of witness testimony and cross-examination. It’s essential to be able to remind your client or the person testifying of their frame of mind or to point out areas where opposing witnesses changed their statements. Most jurors prefer summaries to lengthy witness statements and testimonies that can fill up entire binders extraordinarily quickly without the preparation of a summary.
How Deposition Summaries Work
No matter what type of deposition is conducted and what format it is in, such as written or audio/video recording, the deposition will most likely have to be condensed down into a form that is more easily digestible. A proper deposition summary must be unbiased and present the information accurately, without imparting values or meanings beyond what was originally in the document.
A solid rule of thumb here is that your raw deposition should be condensed down by about a factor of 10-15:1. What this means is that for every 10-15 pages of raw, unfiltered deposition data, you should be left with about a page of more easily obtainable information.
To get the most out of your deposition, it’s important to understand the various types of deposition summaries.
Page-Line
This type of deposition is the most popular choice overall for its ability to concisely present information in an easy-to-find format. How this works is the person preparing the summary, usually a paralegal, will write out a line of information and connect it to the page it can be found on in the original document.
Chronological
This type of deposition is going to provide the most benefits for someone who is looking to prove where they were or what they were doing at a certain time. It presents the relevant facts and a timeline as to how everything played out.
Topic by Topic
This type of deposition is more efficient to compile, but less documented and organized. It mostly presents a group of relevant facts that can be used to quickly understand the basics of a case.
For all these reasons and more, deposition summaries are an essential part of the legal process and provide numerous benefits to anyone using them. Make sure they are done correctly by licensed and credible professionals, and a deposition summary will be a core part of your legal strategy.