GREAT ADVERSE DEPOSITIONS:
PRINCIPLES & PRINCIPAL TECHNIQUES
High-quality adverse depositions require the conscious and conscientious application of an integrated set of logical cross-examination rules. This seminar wastes no time on entry-level wisdom, code chatter, idiosyncratic war stories, or tired maxims. Instead, using video clips from high-profile cases, it brilliantly teaches how to take adverse depositions as never before … the one right, logical way: as an intellectually rigorous discipline. SEE AGENDA
MASTERING THE TOUGHEST-TO-CRAFT
CREDIBILITY ARGUMENTS
Based on the logic that trial is argument; deposition is trial; thus deposition is argument ... there is no such thing as a “discovery” deposition. ALL depositions are trial depositions. In EVERY adverse deposition one of cross-examiner’s central goals is to craft credibility arguments that settle cases and win trials. The focus of this seminar is a uniquely valuable – and entertaining – analysis of the most difficult to master credibility arguments: The Un-Reasonables, which are vital to the execution of great adverse depositions and great trial cross-examinations. (This seminar includes an abbreviated version of the analysis of the attacks against the "I don't know" and "I don't remember.") SEE AGENDA
ATTACKING ADVERSE WITNESS'S
"I DON'T KNOW" & "I DON'T REMEMBER"
To every adverse witness, the answers that represent the Scylla and Charybdis of cross-examination, the risk-laden answers that the adverse witness must dodge whenever possible, are the damning admission and the vulnerable-to-impeachment denial. To accomplish that dodge, the adverse witness, perhaps at the unethical urging and design of his attorney, most usually employs the stratagem of responding to cross-examiner’s “yes or no” questions with dishonest “maybe” answers: the “I don’t know” or the “I don't remember.” There is not another CLE seminar in the country like this one: it teaches how to best attack these toughest-to-successfully-attack answers, whether at deposition or in trial. (Time permitting, this seminar also analyzes the best attack against the dishonest "I do remember" answer.) SEE AGENDA
THE ANATOMY OF A "SUPERSTAR" DEPOSITION:
DAVID BOIES VS. BILL GATES IN U.S. VS. MICROSOFT
A knock-your-eyes-out analysis of the awesome discipline of deposition cross-examination. Using a score of video clips from the intensely contentious three-day deposition taken by the country’s most lauded civil litigator of the world’s richest man in the most high profile civil case in America since the U.S. brought suit against John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, this seminar will teach you the correct paradigm for taking the very best “fact” witness deposition in every case for the rest of time. (Note: If you attended Great Adverse Depositions: Principles & Principal Techniques – and paid attention – the logic and several teaching points in "Superstar" should sound familiar.) SEE AGENDA
ATTACKING THE EXPERT'S OPINION
There is one right, logical method with which to effectively attack the purported scientific merits of adverse expert’s opinion … no matter the field of expertise. As litigators from all areas of practice have attested, this seminar elucidates that logical method and teaches the archetypal set of integrated questions that are at the heart of every great deposition (and every great trial cross-examination) of the witness who has been paid to demolish your case theory. Never again be intimidated when cross-examining any expert. SEE AGENDA
ATTACKING THE EXPERT'S PEDESTAL
The adverse expert is typically the most dangerous witness and, at the same time, the most vulnerable. Most dangerous because he testifies cloaked in the mantle of the “unbiased scientist”; thus, his testimony – if accepted by the jury – can determine an issue, maybe the entire case. Yet, most vulnerable because, unlike the fact witness who must defend only his first-hand observations, the expert witness must defend his testimony from attacks on multiple fronts, including his qualifications, integrity, and thoroughness. This seminar analyzes and illustrates 54 archetypal attacks against the adverse expert’s pedestal-like status. SEE AGENDA
COMBATING OBSTRUCTIONISM AT DEPOSITION
All across the country, obstructionism and advantage-seeking gamesmanship, tactically employed by the tag-team of adverse deponent and opposing attorney, are the bane of civil litigation … undermining cross-examiner’s goal of crafting the clean deposition transcripts that are crucial to obtaining the favorable settlement or the trial victory. This one-of-a-kind seminar offers a comprehensive analysis of the techniques that best counter that obstructionism and gamesmanship. SEE AGENDA
DEPOSING THE ARTFUL DODGER
This seminar teaches how to recognize and attack question-dodging and truth-dodging by even the most brilliant and wily of adverse witnesses. It utilizes numerous video clips from three Q&A sessions where indisputably brilliant and indisputably wily Bill Clinton was cross-examined: on “60 Minutes,” in the Paula Jones case, and before Kenneth Starr’s grand jury. Clinton’s politics (and anybody else’s) are irrelevant to the seminar’s teaching points, thus they are completely ignored. He was selected because on each of these three occasions, he was extremely well prepared, extremely well represented, and extremely motivated to dodge and deceive … and pretty damn successful at both. You’ll not likely depose a more challenging “fact” witness anytime soon. SEE AGENDA