As Americans grow increasingly comfortable with telecommuting and virtual work, attorneys have discovered that witness preparation can be performed remotely with little difficulty. While the usage rates for remote depositions may change in the coming months, many legal professionals believe that remote witness preparation is here to stay! In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the reasons for this trend.
Let’s get started!
Short & Sweet Sessions
Virtual preparation allows for increased flexibility on the part of the attorney as well as the witness. By meeting remotely, you can eliminate the scheduling challenges caused by travel time. Short remote sessions are also useful for building rapport and getting to know your witness. This is the ideal time to cover the critical groundwork for your upcoming deposition such as the preliminaries of deposition technique, discussions of themes, and first run-throughs of the witness’s story. Lastly, holding numerous remote sessions gives you the chance to adjust your preparation plan once you’ve built your witnesses’ confidence and established some momentum.
Hassle-free Collaboration
In addition to facilitating shorter and more frequent sessions, virtual preparation creates a greater opportunity for attorney collaboration. Your colleagues won’t need to budget for travel time, which increases the likelihood that they’ll attend your session and offer feedback. Furthermore, remote witness preparation is a valuable learning tool for junior lawyers at your firm. These sessions give them the opportunity to get more involved in the process, potentially leading individual sessions or assisting with mock cross-examination.
Facilitating Witness Review
Perhaps the most valuable advantage of remote preparation is that it gives your witness the chance to review their performance in real-time. They’ll have a chance to see how their gestures, verbal pacing, posture, tone, and body language will translate to the jurors. You can also record the practice sessions (provided that doing so will not raise discovery issues), which can be played back to demonstrate and discuss certain witness behaviors.
Final Thoughts
Thanks for reading! Virtual prep can be a powerful complement to final, in-person sessions leading up to the deposition. We hope we’ve been able to give you a glimpse into the benefits of remote witness preparation. If you enjoyed this article, feel free to share it on social media!
When you plan your next deposition, don’t forget to take advantage of our plentiful deposition tools. We provide services including remote court reporting, concierge remote exhibit management, remote videography, and full-time tech support for your remote depositions, arbitrations, court hearings, trials, and other proceedings.
