Phillip Miller

The strategy embedded in your depositions will determine the outcome of your case.

Join Phillip Miller (author of Advanced Deposition Strategy and Practice) as he teaches his techniques for taking depositions that will change the defendant’s perception of its risk, decrease your dependence on expert testimony, create persuasive visual evidence from within the deposition, and address the 5 most common questions jurors want to know about your case.

Deposition College goals:

• Participants will develop and practice a strategically developed outline of a key deposition in one of their cases.
• Participants will develop a visual strategy/exhibits to use with their deposition.
• Participants will practice execution of their plan and have an opportunity to be on their feet and “re-do” portions of the deposition as needed.

While the strategies developed will be case specific, there will be incredible learning and carry over from watching fellow participants.

Day 1, Thursday, May 18, 2023

8:30 – 9:30 am Critical Thinking: FACING the Defenses in a Discovery Plan

1. Finding landmines and rebuttals
2. Finding the facts that make the landmines irrelevant, immaterial, or incorrect
3. How juror attitudes affect your deposition strategy
4. Making these attitudes work for you in deposition

9:45 am – 10:45 am Workshop 1: Practice Session Creating a Discovery Plan and Witness Goals – small groups (use your own case)

What is required for a prima facie case, where to look

What are the landmines of the case, the defense model paradigm – it’s the same defenses every time

Using a proof grid

Goals for each witness—three takeaways

How do we make the defenses irrelevant, incorrect, or immaterial

11:00 – 12:00 pm Basic Skills to Discover Everything the Witness knows, protect yourself from changes in testimony, and create soundbites

1. Open-Ended Questions
2. Exhaustion
3. Boxing-in recollection, opinion
4. Restating and summarizing
5. Bracketing
6. Polarizing

1:30 – 2:30 pm Workshop 2: Practice Session Basic Skills – small groups (use your own case)

1. Open-Ended Questions
2. Exhaustion
3. Boxing-in recollection, opinion
4. Restating and summarizing
5. Bracketing
6. Polarizing

2:45 – 3:45 pm Establishing Standards of Care and Conduct with Defense Witnesses

1. The Miller Mousetrap
2. Finding the “right” rule for your case
3. Rhetorical questions

4:00 – 5:30 pm Workshop 3: Drafting Rules/Rhetorical Questions – small groups (use your own case)