Page 70 - FDCC Deposition Drills

A FEW QUESTIONS TO DISCUSS
What is a “question too many?”
If you do ask a “question too many,” how can you recover? How do you know when an answer is good enough?
How do you not retread ploughed ground?
Deposition Drills How to Teach Deposition Skills
One Question too Many
It’s tempting. You’re in a groove. You’re getting one favorable answer after the next, and then you ask the one question too many. You try to get a witness to repeat the same answer for added dramatic effect and she changes her answer, you go from several fact questions to an opinion question and invite a soliloquy, or you ask an ultimate question with which no witness would ever agree. Like Icarus flying too close to the sun, you tempted fate and fate won. Learn not to ask the one question too many.
EXPLANATION
Participants learn not to ask the one question too many.
EXERCISE
Review with the participants examples of one question too many and how to avoid that mistake and then have them role play by asking questions that take them right up to the edge of asking too many questions without crossing that line. Great trial lawyers flirt with that line but don’t cross it.
LESSONS LEARNED
There’s a dance we play when interrogating a witness when deciding whether the answer we secured was good enough. Learning when good is good enough is a skill that takes time to develop and master.
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SECTION 04 CROSS EXAMINATION