What Your Client Will Find on YouTube about Depo Prep (and Why it’s Not Good)
Are you really prepared for that deposition, or are you falling into the trap of catchy YouTube tutorials and oversimplified online advice? Join me today as I navigate this treacherous landscape, discovering the dangerous pitfalls along the way. From the barrage of legal jargon to misinformation, these videos can lead you down a path of confusion, potentially harming your case. Using Texas law as an example, I call out the issues stemming from this online maelstrom of well-meaning but often misguided advice.
But worry not, there is a better way! I advocate for a personalized approach to deposition preparation – tailoring strategies to your specific case needs, rather than using a one-size-fits-all solution. Listen in as I share my tips for successful trial preparations, focusing on client management and the delicate task of one-on-one preparation.
Be cautious of clients seeking advice online and learn how to guide them away from this problematic practice. Whether you’re a budding lawyer or a seasoned veteran, you’ll find valuable insights into crafting unique strategies that cater to your case’s specifics.
In this episode, you will hear:
- Issues with legal advice videos
- The importance of one-on-one client preparation and client management
- The danger in short-format videos with less context and less explanation
- Personalized preparation for successful trials
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Supporting Resources:
Want to see for yourself what’s on YouTube? Click Here.
Have a question or idea for an episode? Email Elizabeth (she reads all her emails) Elizabeth@larricklawfirm.com
Episode Credits:
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know I sent you.
Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick: Hello and welcome back to the podcast, Trial Lawyer Prep. I am your host, Elizabeth Larrick, and I’m glad you’re here today.
I am going to talk about what I found on YouTube about deposition preparation. This episode came by way [00:01:00] of a text message. I think I talked about that some clients will go and look at YouTube. There’s YouTube stuff out there. Go look at it. And I had a text message from someone that said, are you, wow, really?
What’s on YouTube? So I thought, okay, this will be fun. So I did a little poking around on YouTube and. Again, the reason why I decided to do an episode about this is because I know that when people go look at this stuff, there’s a lot of garbage out there. I want to give it to you so you know, Oh, wow, this is what people are looking at.
I need to like one, stop them from doing that to pair them. But again, as always, my mantra is to take the time to pay your client one on one. Don’t let YouTube or Tik TOK or Instagram prepare your client. But also, if you’re working with your client and you’re doing one on one, be sure and ask them if they have looked up things online and then politely ask them to not do that.
[00:02:00] And so hopefully there’s some things in this video that will help you convince them if they are unconvinced that they can’t get ahold of you, get answers from you, or they don’t like your answers, there’s a reason why not to look it up. Now, I’ve also had clients who basically Brooke used to take my advice on that, which then makes you think about this is a client management issue.
Is this really a person who’s ever going to follow my advice, uh, when it comes to their case? That is the topic for a different episode. So let’s jump in really fast. This shouldn’t be a very long episode, but I hope that you find it somewhat entertaining. Okay. So I went to YouTube and just did a simple search, how to prepare for deposition question mark, right?
Not even your deposition. So of course what pops up, there are thousands and thousands of videos on this topic. And if you have searched. YouTube lately for anything you get long videos, you get the [00:03:00] shorts, you even get TikToks that are on there and so it’s just. We’re all spruled nonstop and some of this stuff is, is pretty scary as you get more depth into it.
The most watched video was actually uploaded 12 years ago. So there’s a lot of stuff out there. So just think 12 years of stuff, some stuff that probably doesn’t apply anymore, but anyhow, lots of videos out there, there are tons of things for people to pick from. The second thing that I noticed when I did this search was there’s title after title, win your deposition, crush your deposition, acing your deposition.
And some of these videos with these really short, like catchy titles are four minutes long. And you’re thinking, wait a second, how does somebody do that in four minutes? The shorter the video, the more likely someone’s actually going to watch it. And there’s whatever. Somewhat looks put together video.
People are [00:04:00] probably going to watch it. There was a couple other ones that I saw the power of saying, I don’t know. This one we’ll talk about a little more in depth. And if you rearrange that filter, you can see again, one of the top watched videos, that particular video, the power of saying, I don’t know, was in the top three.
Another one of those titles, the perfect witness. And that one had, it was in the top. Think four, five with 157. And that one, I actually clicked to watch a little of, and it’s an hour long. It is not a recent video. I will tell you it’s gotta be at least 10, 15 years old. It’s very interesting. I will say, and like most things, what I’ll talk about does not have a lot of context, a specific specificity.
One of the other titles that I saw that I wanted to tell you about was why insurance companies want to take your deposition, hence, to pay you less money. Lots of ones about deposition trick. [00:05:00] As you’re looking through here, rather, as I was looking through, there’s no real distinction. Of ones that are for like client depositions to prepare and ones that are for lawyers.
They’re all mixed in there. Of course, some of the ones that I’m talking about where these titles have to do for clients. Third thing that I noticed was we have either very older looking male lawyers in suits. Uh, some of them didn’t have a suit on, but they had a shirt and a tie, you know, in front of a bunch of books.
And then very young looking lawyers, there’s a lawyer out there, Jarrett Stone, who has basically he’s in a t shirt and he does all his videos that way. So it’s like casual and then verses on up to suits. And again, you don’t know if any of these people are lawyers. They never say I’m a lawyer, some of them don’t, but that’s another one of those things where it’s just these people are lawyers.
All right. So let’s talk about some of the advice that I heard, because I did watch several videos, of course, not all the way through, but some of the shorter ones and [00:06:00] some of the more popular ones, and a lot of the advice was the same, right? One of them was don’t stress, don’t stress about it. And it went so far as to say, I, to help a client not stress, I tell them that I’m just going to wear a business casual, right?
I’m not even going to wear a suit. Okay, sure. Another one that I heard many times, which was. You need to learn to pause before you answer a question because your lawyer needs to object. Okay, all right, so we’re just going to learn to pause. Another one that I heard was that you, the witness, should anticipate the questions, right?
If you sit down and prepare by looking at documents, you should be able to anticipate the lawyer questions. Found that one interesting. Of course, don’t lie as part of the advice. Don’t guess, part of the advice. Listen to the objections of your lawyer and try to decipher the message that is being sent to you.
Be [00:07:00] short, be concise with your answers, right? Don’t overshare. Only answer the question asked. I love this one because I just, and here’s the thing, we’ll talk about why I have some, like, why I have a lot of problems with this advice. No examples here. Zero examples in the, in these videos. And that is normally like the only answer the question has is almost always followed with make the other lawyer work for your answers.
Again, no examples here. Okay. The other one, of course, we talked about this a whole video on it. Say, I don’t know. Say, I don’t recall. Uh, another one that I thought was interesting that didn’t, wasn’t in a lot of videos, which was deferred to your experts. Okay, sure. Sure. Another one went on for about five minutes about.
I don’t think that was the whole thing was, you need to be nice. You need to be polite. [00:08:00] You need to be calm, no matter what happens, because that means you’re credible. That means that you don’t mind this litigation, that it’s just no big deal and that you are so likable. And I just thought, who else was really calm and polite and nice?
Jeffrey Dahmer. Okay. So doing those things alone, does it mean you’re credible or that you don’t mind litigation? I just. Interesting video. And then of course, last piece of advice that I saw in almost all of them was listen attentively to the questions. Of course, balled up with only answer the questions being asked in all of these videos, nearly every single one of them without skipping a beat.
We’ll talk about what a deposition is right at the beginning, and again, this goes back to, I’ve said this before, this whole, like, what I call a sit and suffer approach, which is basically a deposition is where the lawyers from the other side get to ask you questions under oath [00:09:00] with a court reporter, okay?
That’s literally what it is. Nobody talks about the purpose, although there was one on there with the title on there, but anyhow, it’s, it’s such a recipe for disaster. But before I totally talk about that, let me just talk about just a couple of problems just for the place of thinking, if I’m a client, I’m a person who’s never done a deposition and I’ve got to go be deposed and that’s why I get a text message.
I get the email, we need to schedule your deposition. Okay. They want to take your deposition. Okay. And that’s all you get. Give me dates. Let me have dates. Okay. So they’re just out on the web trying to find information. We know, I know from statistics that YouTube is the number one social media and search, right?
Number one in all age groups, YouTube is the tip top. Okay. So we know they’re going to YouTube. So they’re looking through this stuff. And first thing I [00:10:00] would say is there’s absolutely no context for them. Okay. Very few of these videos will say this is for someone facing a family law deposition. This is for someone in a corporate law.
This is somebody, uh, for a business lawsuit. This is someone who is in a personal injury lawsuit. Now there are a few that had workers comp in the title, which would be helpful, but again, if you’re just going from the top down or in most people do, what’s the top viewed stuff? Like none of those have any context in it.
And again, I also mentioned earlier. As a client looking through this, it’s hard to decipher which one is for lawyers and which one is for people. And again, our clients aren’t going to know the difference they could, it’s been a lot of time on there just trying to figure it out. And you’re thinking, why does that matter?
If all the advice is truly the same, Lisbeth, it’s all good advice here. And I would just say that really under prepares them. Somebody going in for a family law deposition is going to have a rude awakening compared to a civil [00:11:00] litigation. Demonstration, right? They’re very different styles of questioning and types of questions.
And so again, there’s just very little context. And the other problem that I would have from a client’s perspective is very little examples or explanation. So that leaves the client to guess, how does that apply in my situation? Again, answer the question asked, give me some examples of questions where people have gone on.
And one example that lawyer, a lawyer gave was, how was your vacation last week? Okay, well if the person goes on and on about their vacation, guess what? That’s not gonna hurt the case. We need examples where somebody might be oversharing that significantly hurts their testimony, okay? But they don’t do that.
Why? Because again, we’re getting further into preparation where we’re obviously doing lawyer work. Not just being very general. Let’s see. I think these are [00:12:00] super general. No examples. No explanation A lot of these videos have legal jargon with no Explanation which leaves your client guessing no one explains what an injection is any of these things All of them say that this is, the lawyer needs to object and you need, before you answer, you need to make sure it’s a question that you can answer legally and that’s your lawyer’s job.
Just hold on here. Again, in some states, okay, maybe in some countries, okay, maybe, but here in Texas, like 99 percent of things are going to pass muster and you got to answer them. So to give somebody that impression, they may have to answer questions. It’s really not helpful. And again, at the end of the day, most of the stuff is extremely general.
Okay. And again, because as lawyers, we’re making these videos, you know, that don’t give lawyer advice, but it’s lawyers giving advice. And it’s, again, it’s so general and I just, it’s such a problematic to me from my point of view. And again, [00:13:00] if you’re thinking like my client has got the finishes made up and now, this stuff is all on TikTok.
Okay. So imagine it in shorter formats with less context and even less explanation. All right. So let’s take this dog down the road and say, okay, really Elizabeth, what’s the problem here? I, it looks like I’ve got a proactive client. They’re going to go and watch these videos. Uh, you know, learn more about it.
This seems like a proactive person, you know, research. Okay, cool. Let’s take art, one of our very top of view videos, right? The power of saying, I don’t know, and your client watches and you don’t know that they’ve watched it. You gave them 30 minutes of preparation with some of the same reinforced advice that they got for the video.
So this reinforces the video must be true and correct. They get their deposition and. It’s one, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, after another, and [00:14:00] some of it, you’re okay with them. And then you start to realize like there’s stuff that they do know that they’re just not answering because they think that I don’t know is what they’re supposed to do because it’s powerful.
So it’s this video told on some lawyer, right? And as opposing counsel, you can get two roads, probably three, but we’ll just talk about two here. One is sometimes lawyers just stop the deposition. Say, Hey. Looks like we might need to reconvene because you’re telling me you don’t know but yet you answered this question in your Discovery answers or when you’re talking to the witness that day or stop ago Talk to the judge or the other Avenue, which is keep going.
It completely locked your client into knowing absolutely nothing They know nothing about their rights Which then they think, great, I’ll see you in trial because we’re not ever going to settle this thing and we’ll play this in front of the jury and see what happens. So, that’s one example of a problem like you don’t want your client [00:15:00] to follow this super general advice.
When that’s not always going to be, that’s not going to always serve it very well. So just know that this stuff is out there. Just know that people will take it hook, line, and sinker. I was, the other thing I did here was I just looked at some of the comments and all the comments. This is so great. Thank you so much.
I had much less worry about it. And I’m just like, Oh man, and yikes, because they don’t have any context. Right. They’re trying to fill that void, uh, for information. So again, going back to what’s the purpose of this episode? Hey, again, let me urge you to take the time to prepare your client. One on one do more than that.
30 minute shot at people. Um, two, don’t let YouTube or TikTok prepare your client. There’s going to be a misstep there and it may not be correctable. The other thing is ask folks if they’re looking stuff up online, right? And then kindly reminding them not to do that, especially when it comes to [00:16:00] depositions.
One thing we didn’t talk about. And I, one of the ideas that I had was to put together. Some of the top depositions that are on YouTube, because there are a lot, if you just go try to find depositions to watch depositions, the worst of the worst are on there and put it on the website, my website, so you can just watch it and go see, wow, this is the stuff that’s on there, clients are not deciphering, they don’t know which is good, which is bad, and this looks like this is a celebrity and they seem to be doing it and it seems to be fine.
Again, that whole context state. One other thing I will give as an example is I recently was preparing a client for trial and. Their research in getting ready for trial and trial testimony, he had watched hours and hours of trial on YouTube. He’d watched the Johnny Depp trial. He’d watched the Murdoch trial.
And again, he wasn’t going in [00:17:00] for a defamation case or a murder case. And so that was his examples, right? That was his fallback. In his mind, what was good and what was bad. And so it got ingrained. So it’s hard to go back and say, okay, well, that’s not really what will be necessary here. That may work there for Johnny Depp, but that doesn’t work here in a person entry case, so just keep that in mind because.
They will get in their mind what is good, what works because it worked for in this video for this person, right? But that may not work for them in their case. So I’ll like to say that personalized preparation is the way to go. So I hope that you found this helpful and thank you so much for listening.
Rate and review on your favorite podcast platform. And until next time, thank you so [00:18:00] much.