What Can You Expect in an Expert Witness Deposition from the Opposing Attorney?

Be prepared for open ended questions

Be prepared for open ended questions. If they have acquired well, deposing attorneys will probably jump right to your opinions, have you enunciate each one, and then ask you to tell them what you did to reach each of those opinions. For each opinion, they may repeat the same sequence of questions: what exact procedures did you follow, Mr. Expert? Can you describe those steps further? They may well ask what steps you did not pursue, and why? Can you tell them about the results? For each result, they may ask you to describe in detail how that result affected each opinion you offered. They will ask open-ended questions about what assumptions you made in your explorations. In all cases, they are hoping that you will ramble on enough to give them useful additional data.

Be prepared as well for extra, related questions, such as:

Q: "Who chose the materials you reviewed, Mr. Expert?"

You should have received preliminary material from your retaining attorney to review. After you review this material, you are then free to ask for and choose additional materials to review.

Q: "Ms. Expert, what else did you Consider in your opinions but later decide not to rely on?"

Be careful in your response because you have to have solid reasons (like irrelevance) for having excluded something from your final opinions. The reason cannot be that the material would help the opinion of the other side in the matter. Attorneys discover to ask these starter questions of almost every witness.

The opposing attorney, his client, any other attorneys in the room, the opposing expert, and any techie on the other side of the table want to know how much you know. Some of them will have read your report, and so they will know roughly what you are about to say. They may not know all the details since none of them will have seen your notes yet. Most of them will not have read the documents or materials that you used during your investigation and referenced in your report.

The deposition is their initial opportunity to get a look at you. They want to measure you. How do you look? How do you sound? The Lawyers will be assessing what effect you will have on the jury if the case goes to trial. The client on the other side of the table wants to know if you are a better expert than their expert, if you know more than their expert, and if your assessments are correct or not. They want to know if you are better able to present the technical elements of the case than their expert.

Perhaps, they just want to know whether you are an honest expert whose opinions will help reduce the extent of their success in the case. Then again, if they know that they are on the wrong side of the facts, they will want to know if you have the proof against them. They will assess whether you have done a professional job in coming to your conclusions, and if you have the ability to sway the jury into accepting those results.

In short, everybody wants to find out as much as possible about you. Your experience and expertise supports your qualifications to do the job, legitimizes the opinions you propose, and suggests how strong a witness you will be when presenting those opinions in a trial.

What Can You Expect in an Expert Witness Deposition from the Opposing Attorney?

By: Judd Robbins

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