The neat thing about this internship has been the opportunity to go to so many different kinds of depositions! Today I was back with David at Corporation Counsel, but this time, it was for a telephone deposition!
The deposition took place in the office of one of the Corporation Counsel attorneys, with plaintiff's attorney sitting in as well and the deponent questioned over the phone. He was a psychiatrist, and much of it consisted of him reading his notes -- whereupon he immediately speeded up and dropped his voice. Oh, well!
But once again, most of it seemed actually sort of doable. I was glad not to have to write it up, but it was not totally inconceivable that I could -- if I had the tapes. There were portions that I had to drop because I simply could not hear them clearly.
In school, we'd been warned about telephone depositions. Because you can't see the deponent, the idea was that you could not actually swear him in. I asked David about this, and he said that it was a local practice to have an implied agreement that the reporter could swear in the witness over the telephone. (Of course, both parties could see that the reporter was with them and not with the deponent, in this case, so it makes sense that they were tacitly giving their approval.) This is probably one of those things that varies from location to location, and one of the advantages of having experienced reporters to ask questions to is that you can find out about your local practices!
I had been alternating my note-taking technique. Sometimes I used stickies; sometimes, index cards. The index cards had the advantage of being more maneuverable; in a situation where I had plenty of conference table in front of me, it was sort of nice to be able to flip the cards around and categorize my notes. This depo was one of the times when I would have been better served by stickies; there was no good place to put my note cards!
Lessons Learned:Ask about local practices with regards to unusual depositions.
Have multiple ways to take notes.
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