Skill: Prepare for a deposition

Learn to use CoCounsel's Prepare for a Deposition skill
Lawyers often need to prepare for depositions, interviews, investigative meetings, or they need to develop written questionnaires for intake and other tasks. CoCounsel's
Prepare for a Deposition
skill reads your description to draft relevant topics and questions for your particular situation.
  1. Go to the chat and enter a description of the deposition, interview, investigative meetings, or written forms. CoCounsel will take a moment to review your request and then provide a confirmation.
    note
    For example:
    Please help me prepare for a deposition. I represent the defendant in a criminal case in a hearing on a motion to suppress a statement to police. My client was in the hospital and on morphine for pain when the police questioned him. I am trying to suppress the statement on the grounds that my client could not have understood the Miranda waiver while in the hospital on morphine. I am questioning the officer who took the statement to elicit information useful in a motion to suppress.
  2. Review CoCounsel's response:
    1. In the upper right corner of CoCounsel's response, the
      Prepare for a Deposition
      skill is confirmed.
    2. Under
      Request
      , the description of the requested deposition is confirmed.
    3. If you no longer need assistance, select
      Cancel
      .
  3. When you are ready to proceed, select
    Submit request
    . CoCounsel will begin its work and show its progress.
    1. To receive a notification when the results are ready, select
      Email me when complete
      .
    2. To stop CoCounsel's work, select
      Cancel
      .
  4. When your results are ready, select
    View results
    . The results window will appear.
  5. Review the results.
    1. At the top, CoCounsel restates the request.
    2. To navigate suggested topics and questions, collapse and expand each topic to review its questions.
  6. To copy the results to paste somewhere else, select
    Copy
    . To download the results as a Word Document, select the ellipsis icon, then select
    Download
    , and then
    Word Document
    . The results will download.

Limitations

The request length can be up to 4,000 charaters.
The results length can be up to 5 topics, with 5 questions per topic.
tip
Request additional topics and questions in the chat. For example: "Here in the chat, please draft 5 more topics with 5 more questions each."
CoCounsel understands nuance, humor, and implied references. This means CoCounsel finds information and references that traditional search engines cannot. The best requests are specific, clear, precise, and concise. When requests are not, CoCounsel may omit additional information to focus on just a part of a longer, complex, overbroad question.

Tips

Describe the circumstances regarding the deposition, interview, investigative meetings, or written forms just like you would to a colleague. Use natural language when describing your deposition and avoid complicated syntax or Boolean codes and strict filtering. For best results, we recommend including the following information when describing your deposition to CoCounsel:
  • Specify the type of deposition (e.g., expert, fact witness, Rule 30(b)(6) representative, or Person Most Knowledgeable)
  • Provide and explain legal source material (e.g., Rule 30(b)(6) representatives must testify about information known or reasonably available to the organization)
  • Briefly describe the type of case and claims at issue (example: “This is an antitrust case involving price-fixing claims in the market for legal research software”).
  • Note whether the witness is adverse or any other relationship to the witness (e.g., “This is the lead witness for the opposing party,” or “This is a third-party witness”).
  • Note anything else you would like CoCounsel to consider when generating deposition questions (e.g., “This witness is known to be untruthful,” or “This witness may have spoliated evidence”).
  • Use narrow, specific questions. It's better to ask multiple, narrow questions rather than a single, broad question.
    tip
    Too broad:
    What was the Planned Parenthood case about?
    Better:
    What were the elements of the court’s reasoning in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992)?
  • Be precise and concise
    • Avoid using vague or ambiguous language, like passive voice.
      tip
      Passive voice:
      Where the defense was sided with by the court.
      Active voice:
      Where the court sided with the defense.
    • Spell out legal terms a law student might not know.
    • Grammatical and spelling errors in a question can be misinterpreted.
    tip
    Wordy:
    Cases where there was a minor who was the plaintiff, and who was also under the age of 14 at the time of the alleged events that the court was considering.
    Better:
    Cases with a minor plaintiff under the age of 14.

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