Intensive Depositions

Catalog description

This course will provide an intensive insight into practitioners' goals in taking depositions and in representing deponents and will provide a study into methods for achieving those goals. It will include classroom discussion and demonstration and a practical opportunity for each student to take and to defend mock depositions. We will explore the use of depositions at trial, which is a predicate to understanding depositions' goals; the central role of admissions from documentary and deposition discovery in the development of civil cases; and techniques for eliciting admissions (or, when representing a deponent, avoiding such admissions). Techniques will also be explored for pure discovery, for trial preservation testimony, and for the avoidance of the development of evidence harmful to one's case.