Ep. 272 – How to Get What You Need in a Deposition (SPECIAL GUESTS: Coach Jody and Coach Marlo)

I sat down with Coach Jody and Coach Marlo to discuss a smarter and more intentional way to tackle depositions.

MOST attorneys are doing them on autopilot, and we’re here to show you HOW to approach them with purpose and creativity.

Here’s what we cover:

➡ WHY fact-finding depos alone are holding you back and how to flip the narrative.

➡ THE DIFFERENCE between being reactive and proactive in depo prep. (Spoiler: one gets you better results.)

➡ HOW to bring the same clarity and confidence from voir dire into depos.

➡ WHY collaboration will always beat going it alone — EVERY TIME.

Hit play NOW and start rethinking your depositions.

Xo,
Sari

➡️Listen on Spotify

➡️Listen on Apple

➡️Listen on YouTube

➡️FREE FB GROUP FOR PLAINTIFF & CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEYS

"If I’m the director at trial, I’m also the director in the deposition. I want to direct where we’re going, not just follow where the witness leads me. Strategic depo work is how cases shift."

Coach jody

272 Transcription

Sari de la Motte:

Welcome everybody to another episode of From Hostage to Hero. Coach Jody and Coach Marlo are back with me today, because they will not leave my house. I have tried to get them... No, I want them to move in actually. And Marlo basically said if I put a bed in that other room, she's here.

Jody Moore:

Bunk beds.

Marlo Arnolds:

I said that like a year ago.

Sari de la Motte:

But you have a husband and crotch fruit.

Marlo Arnolds:

You just wanted to use the word crotch fruit in a podcast.

Sari de la Motte:

I did, to make Jody just go-

Jody Moore:

Made me blush. Really? This is a national podcast. What are we doing?

Sari de la Motte:

Why do you think they listen, Jody? They're not going to hear this on some boring other legal podcast. Okay, getting down to business, we are here to talk about how to prep to take a depo, and we have not decided on the title yet. So by the time you're hearing this, we will have a title, but we don't know what the title is. And the reason for that is, we are this whole year talking amongst ourselves, meaning leadership here at H2H, but also with our legacy members, meaning members in the crew have been here one year or longer, we have a call called Expanding the Method. And what we're doing is talking about if you have the book, and if you don't, hello, but in the book I talk about the times in trial where you're talking to or with the jury. So that's while you do you're opening and closing.

And as the H2H method has grown, everyone is like, "Well, what about cross exam or direct exam or witness prep," which we talked about last time, "or all the other parts of the trial?" And we're like, "Fine, we'll figure it out." So we're here to tell you that we've not figured it out yet, but we have some ideas on depo prep, and that's what we're doing back in the crew. So you're getting all this in the crew. You know you are if you're in there. And if you're not in there, really, you need to think about your life choices because you should be in there. So today, we're talking about how to prep to take a depo. And as always, when we talk about this kind of thing, we're going to talk about how we do it wrong first. So who wants to start us out with how do we normally even view depos in general? You and I were talking about this earlier and I thought this was so interesting.

Jody Moore:

I think one general approach that we are challenging in expanding the method is that we're just taking fact-based or investigation-based depositions, right?

Sari de la Motte:

Yes.

Jody Moore:

I think the traditional thought process is we file our case, we do some discovery, we have a list of witnesses that we want to depose, and maybe last minute we figure out who is this person and what kind of questions am I going to ask them that are who, what, where, when, why?

Sari de la Motte:

Give me the lay of the land on this case.

Marlo Arnolds:

Yep.

Jody Moore:

Yep, yep. And that's great, you do have to do that. But it's not deep work, it's not the deep type of work. It's not H2H method work, and I dare say it's not really trial-ready deposition strategy.

Marlo Arnolds:

Yeah. I think another thing that's really common is, "I'm not sure how to take this deposition. So I'm going to go find a transcript from another lawyer who I trust and see how they took a deposition." And so we'll find a deposition outline from a friend or we'll find a deposition transcript from someone who we respect and we'll just copy that deposition.

Jody Moore:

Yeah, I get that sometimes. "Has anyone taken the deposition of a wound treatment nurse"? And I'm like, "Yeah, but my deposition outline may not match what it is that you're looking for because my deposition outline is about my client and their risk factors and their care plan and their medical records." But I do think you're right, it's very common to do something that's comfortable. So I might even look at my own data bank and be like, "Oh, I took that treatment nurse depo once before," which again is fine as a foundation, but it's not going to get you where you need to go.

Marlo Arnolds:

Get us started.

Jody Moore:

And we're not suggesting this is out of laziness, we want to do what's right for our case.

Sari de la Motte:

I'm suggesting that.

Jody Moore:

Marlo and I are not.

Marlo Arnolds:

Maybe sometimes, but we think, "Hey, that's a really great lawyer. I'm going to see how he did it or see how she did it." And maybe that's the right way to do it. It's a lack of trust in our own ability to approach that deposition the best way.

Sari de la Motte:

Yeah, it's the same thing when people ask, "Well, do you have voir dires we can look at?" And we are going to start a database of some standard funnels, but again, to get you thinking. They're not going to work for every case, we're not going to be like, "Here's a trucking case voir dire." It's one trucking case voir dire, but it may not be the right one for your case. So we were also talking about timing, too. And I might be going out of order what we thought we were going to talk about, but I just thought this was so interesting is so often, especially when I was doing way more trial consulting, I'm glad I'm not doing as much now because I have consultants like you guys can do it for me, but I would say, "Well, what did they say in their deposition about X, Y, Z point?"

And they're like, "Well, I didn't ask them that." And because they'd taken the depth so early and they're like, "Oh my gosh, if I had done all this work..." And I hear all the time, "I'm going to come work with you when I first get the case because then it'll give us some thought of what I should be asking for depos." So how would you decide, I guess, between depos to get a lay of the land, because I think there is a time for that, and depos where you're trying to be strategic?

Jody Moore:

Right, so you're definitely skipping ahead. But I think the big picture question is what is the purpose of taking each deposition? You have to understand that there are different reasons to take different depositions. So yes, some of them are fact-finding missions, and if they're fact-finding missions about who, what, where, when, why, then they might come earlier in the deposition. Because I just need to know what car was in front of what car and who was at this intersection and what were the instructions that were given when something happened. But if you're going to do a strategic deposition, one where I might want to be establishing the rules, the safety rules, one where I might be trying to establish the mechanism of injury, then I'm going to want to do the deep work that we've been talking about, the clarity on the case and uncovering the things that I want to be undermining.

I need to be doing that deep work before I go and take those depositions. So it's not always linear time. You were asking me that, "Well, in the course of a year, when do you take these versus those?" It's not necessarily linear time, it's more about for these particular witnesses, where do they fall? Are they really fact-based witnesses or are they right way, wrong way, causation witnesses, do they undermine a defense point? Are they setting up a strategy that I need for trial? I might need a specific piece of information to oppose a summary judgment motion or to support a motion in limine. So my sense of it is that we have a deposition list and there's 10 people on it, and we might assign an associate and be like, "Take these depos," and we're not really being as strategic and doing the deep thinking that needs to be done.

So as we're talking about expanding the method, and I've spent so much time talking about how do we get clear on what the cases are about, the sooner we get clear on what the cases are about by using the H2H method, which is what I want to talk about, then we're more prepared to take those depositions. So that 30 days before trial when you're like, "Did we ever ask anyone about that principle that's the actual bedrock foundation of our entire case?" We aren't looking at each other going, "We didn't think to ask that and now we've built the whole case around it," right before trial.

Marlo Arnolds:

And that's actually how we were thinking of starting the podcast, which was who's been in this situation? Here you are, you're a week before trial or a few days before trial and you think, "Gosh, I just don't have the answer to this question in my deposition. Why didn't I ask that in deposition?" And I think that's a really common place to be. Certainly I've been there, and it's due to a lack of strategic thought in advance about what am I looking for in this deposition? So how do we solve that problem?

Jody Moore:

Yep.

Sari de la Motte:

Well, before you go there, because I think that's where we want to go. But what I'm hearing is that there's two buckets. There is the fact-finding, let me get my arms around the case depositions, and then there's the more strategic, I'm trying to do something with that depositions. And I'd never thought about that before until we had the conversation that those are two different things and they come at different times. And so thank you for doing that. Now let's talk about more.

Jody Moore:

It just pinged something for me, they're also two different witnesses. So when we think about how is the witness going to show up to the deposition, which I do like to think about, and we'll talk about that, a fact-finding witness, I'm not as worried about them necessarily lying or being evasive or a whole bunch of objections from the defense counsel. It's like, "Did you work on this day? And what time did you get there? And what color was the light?" We're just getting that information. But if I'm taking a corporate rep depo, I'm expecting a lot more hostility.

I'm expecting that my questions need to be very clear, I need to have a piece of paper or a policy backing up everything that I'm saying. And I'm anticipating how I think the defense attorney might try to get in my way, I'm also anticipating how it is that I think I can get the witness to agree with my principles. So I'm preparing differently for those depositions, not just because they are different, but I think the witnesses show up differently and I think counsel shows up differently. And I think that's part of the strategy.

Sari de la Motte:

Yeah. Love that. And we were also talking earlier too, about how so many things we can be strategic about in trial, like voir dire being one of them. Where it's like most people, the night before, write some questions, go in there, try to get as many people off for cause and then be like, "Oh, y'all are left? Great, let's do this." Right? Where it's like, "Oh my gosh, you can be so strategic there." And I think this is another place, not to mention the Expert Witness Prep podcast that we did earlier, so it's another place where if you're really thinking about your case in that deep work way, you can be very strategic here and you're missing an opportunity.

Jody Moore:

Right. So you just brought up voir dire, and I think that's what made the light bulb go off for us, that the things that we're doing to prepare for voir dire, we can actually apply those in deposition. It's really fun. So I'm going to turn it over to Marlo for that.

Marlo Arnolds:

Yeah. So how we prepare for a voir dire here in the H2H world is we create a fears list. We ask the attorney to sit down and say, "What are your fears in this case?"

Sari de la Motte:

And this is really hard for them, right?

Marlo Arnolds:

Right. Attorneys have a lot of trouble coming up with fears. It's really fun in a group because everyone's like, "Oh, not those fears." There are more fears. There are fears for your fears.

Jody Moore:

So many fears.

Sari de la Motte:

That's why I put it at step number one. I'm like, "Good, we're on a roll. You did step number one." That was easy.

Marlo Arnolds:

And that leads us to, all right, now using those fears, we come up with our ideal juror profile. So what would a juror have to say in order to completely disarm this fear? So one fear that we often have in cases is the shit happens defense. "Oh, well, the doctor messed up, but stuff happens." What would an ideal juror have to say? An ideal juror would have to say, "Doctors are responsible when they make mistakes."

Sari de la Motte:

Just like anybody else.

Marlo Arnolds:

Right. And so you work with the fears list ideal juror profile, and you come up with your principles in the case. Principles are ideas or concepts that 99% of the population agrees with, and your jury's going to give you those principles. And Jody and I were thinking that you start with those principles going into your expert witness or your witness deposition.

Jody Moore:

Right. So the idea is how you always say, for example, in voir dire, the biggest fear is, "I don't know what's going to come out of a juror's mouth."

Sari de la Motte:

Which is such bullshit.

Jody Moore:

Right? You're like, "Yes, you do." You know they're going to say if you break it, you buy it. Or people should be responsible when they hurt someone.

Sari de la Motte:

Or lying is wrong.

Jody Moore:

Exactly. And so we're playing with the idea that even when I go into a deposition, we might have that same fear. We might say, "Oh, I just don't know what this witness is going to say." But the truth is, we do. If we lead that same witness to the same principle, the same universal principle, the odds are we're going to get it. Or as Rick Friedman would say, they're going to look really stupid disagreeing with it and the attorney's going to look really belligerent trying to get in the way of it.

And you can actually align with the witness if what you're saying is so reasonable and duh, and the attorney's like, "Don't answer that." So what we're hoping for and advocating for is the sooner you do the ideal juror beliefs or the sooner you mine for the principles, now build your outline around that principle. "So would you agree, Mr. or Ms. Witness, that if you hurt someone, you should be held responsible? And you understand in this case that we're trying to hold the trucking company responsible for X, Y and Z. Do you hold the value that is okay to not be responsible when you hurt someone?" And so now we're starting to actually play with the principal in the deposition.

Sari de la Motte:

I love it.

Jody Moore:

Yes. And so I don't know that we are doing that. Some great lawyers of course are doing that, and sometimes we're doing that when we're really doing the deep dive on our cases. But if we're honest, I don't think we're doing that strategically on every depo, on every case. We're just not.

Marlo Arnolds:

And I want to add the opportunity here to funnel in a deposition. So if you have a trucking expert in a deposition, why aren't you asking that trucking expert, "Is this rule important? What's important about this rule? What can happen if the trucking company breaks this rule?" Get that stuff from the witness as well so when the jury gives it to you, the expert can't wiggle when they're on the stand.

Sari de la Motte:

Yeah, love it. Love it.

Jody Moore:

And you can devil's advocate, too.

Sari de la Motte:

Ooh, say more about that.

Jody Moore:

Well, just if you get the witness to agree to a principal, you go, "Well, what would you say if somebody came in and said," and then whatever your snarky devil's advocate is that you know the defense attorney wants to say in your case. "What would you say if somebody came in..." I'm trying to think of a good snarky devil's advocate. Marlo's the devil's advocate queen.

Marlo Arnolds:

Well, trucking companies don't have to make sure drivers load their loads correctly, right?

Jody Moore:

What would you say if somebody came in and tried to make that argument and say, "That's not really your job as a trucking company." And you're using that devil's advocate snarky to be like, "Well, no, I just told you for the last 30 minutes in the deposition that that's what the motor carrier safety rules say, and that's what my policies and procedures say, and that's what I train my drivers to do, and that they get disciplined if they don't do it. So yeah, no, it actually is my responsibility." So you're actually anticipating that they're going to make some argument later, serve that to the witness as a devil's advocate and get them to tell you why that point would be wrong.

Sari de la Motte:

I love that. Why aren't more attorneys doing this kind of strategic depo?

Jody Moore:

Again, attorneys are. Part of this conversation got spawned a little bit because I was reading Depositions Are Trial by Sach Oliver, which is a great book, and I pulled a lot of tips and tricks out of it. And we had already been talking about using the H2H method in trial, and I think that that's an example... I'm sorry, using the H2H method in deposition. I think that book's an example of strategically thinking before taking your deposition, it's really reinforcing that rule. So some people are doing it, but for the same reasons we talked about in some of the Clarity podcast, we aren't setting aside enough time, we're doing the thing that is comfortable instead of the thing that is risky by recycling that outline or using those same questions or just getting the bare minimum. Again, it takes a lot of time to put in this level of strategy in advance. And the other thing that Marlo pointed out before we came on the air was how hard that is to do when you're just sitting at your computer by yourself.

Sari de la Motte:

Yes.

Marlo Arnolds:

Yes, absolutely. So we were just talking about how if you're just sitting in your own sounding room and trying to, "I'm going to think about different ideas for funneling this defense expert in their deposition," you can only get so far. But if you have someone, a suite mate or a partner or a friend you can call, or you can do it in the crew, you've maybe come to a case round table, which is the best thing in my opinion about H2H, you can get so much further.

Sari de la Motte:

Or H2H.

Marlo Arnolds:

Because collaboration makes us stronger. The sum of the parts is greater than the two parts.

Sari de la Motte:

Yeah. Well, we were just talking about this earlier, I was saying that I had my household manager, which I think everyone should have, start my decorating. Because I had brought all the Thanksgiving, Halloween stuff up the other day and I started trying to put it out, and I got so overwhelmed. I don't know why, just not space in my world, and I was like, "I can't do this." And so I was like, "Would you take over this?" And she's like, "Yes." And I said, "With the caveat that I may change things." And she's like, "Absolutely. It's not my house. I don't care." And once she had put it up, then I started moving things around, but it was so much easier.

Now, she did way more work than what we're talking about here, but even having that extra voice going, "Well, have you tried this or have you thought about this," it just gets those creative juices going. The very interesting way that we think trial lawyering works, that we're just to be super creative by ourselves in our office all the time, and having a thousand other things to do. Even if we have that time to be creative, it just doesn't work that way. Brains don't work that way.

Marlo Arnolds:

I think it's an interesting point about getting stuck. So many places in a case or in our careers, we feel like we're stuck. And if we would just take the time to reach out, just spend a few minutes talking to someone or an hour on a call, it can make the difference in an entire case.

Sari de la Motte:

Spoken like a chief collaborator, which is what Marlowe's role is here in addition to coaching and consulting.

Jody Moore:

I know. I love it.

Sari de la Motte:

All right, what else do you got for us?

Jody Moore:

Well, I want to ping off of a word that you said. You said creative. We think that we're just supposed to be creative sitting in our offices by ourselves. And one of the things, I use the word strategic a lot because that's my favorite word and I want everything to be intentional and strategic, but the creativity, the openness, the curiosity, the playfulness, those are all values here in H2H as well. And so I started thinking about the ideal juror profile and I thought, "Well, what if we had an ideal witness profile?" And the ideal witness profile sounds something like, "Okay, I have the opportunity to depose this adverse witness. What could the adverse witness say? If this came out of their mouth in the deposition, I would skip down the sidewalk, I would high five everybody on the way out of the building, I would add a zero to my settlement demand or my trial ask. What would that be?"

And we don't think about that as a creative exercise. We're just like, "I'm going to go in and be reactive to the information that I get." But if we aren't actually thinking about that, then we don't have the destination set in our GPS. Maybe I will get that wonder statement and maybe I won't, but if I don't even know what it is, I'm certainly not going to get it. So I like the idea of thinking in advance, what could this witness say that would really improve the value of my case? And we can talk about that in the context of the XY filter. They could say this thing that if it were true, I'm likely to win my case, or they would undermine this other thing that if they believe the defense, I'm likely to lose.

That's one way to look at it, but it's really more like when we are doing the ideal juror belief where we're like, "Wave the magic wand." They would just say something crazy and you'd be like, "That's a great juror for us." Even though they'd probably get struck for cause on the other side. I want to be thinking about the witness that way. They'd say, "I didn't do that because it costs too much money." Okay, well then how do I design my questions around trying to get that person to give me the honest answer, which is the reason they did it the wrong way was it cost too much money or it cost too much time.

Sari de la Motte:

Time, which is money.

Jody Moore:

Right. But I have to think about that in advance strategically to be like, "That would be the a-ha moment." Not a trick, not a deception, not being a sleazy lawyer, which is what the witness probably thinks we're trying to do, but it's actually the truth. It's actually the truth. Now let me design my questions around trying to get that point. And I don't think we apply creativity or playfulness or curiosity to the deposition process.

Sari de la Motte:

Well, that's where I thought you were going... Well, a lot, I think. I think that's where I thought you were going to go is that when I use the word creative, I thought you were going to say that so many attorneys don't believe that what we do is creative work. When I've called you guys artists before, people are like, "What?" And I'm like, you guys are creating all the time. Or not. I think that's the part of the problem is that when people come into H2H, and then they start saying, "Oh my gosh, trial is fun again," part of that is because we really want you to be creative and we help you be creative.

And it's collaborative and we're like, "Ooh, what if we did this? Or Ooh, isn't it really that?" And it's all this whole group coming in. And then you start to recognize that when trial lawyering is good is when you are being creative, especially with the group. So that's where I thought you were going to go, but I think if you're going to be creative, most people don't think about it very much in depositions. Marlo, what do you want to add to any of this?

Marlo Arnolds:

Well, I was just going to add that Jody was using the XY filter and that brought up, I was just in a case roundtable earlier this week, or I guess last week now, but where a new crew member was going into a deposition of a really important witness. And that was what he brought to the case roundtable was what do I want to get out of this deposition? And one of our legacy members just organically brought up Jody's XY filter, which is so beautiful. If the jury believes X, we win, and if they believe Y, we lose. And it was just such a lovely example and a way to go into a deposition knowing, "All right, I've done my ideal juror profile, I've done my fears list ideal juror profile, I know what my principles are. So knowing that now, what do I want to get from this deposition?" It's really a whole different way to approach.

Sari de la Motte:

Well, it's the same thing when people say, "What should I ask in the voir dire?" I'm like, "What do you want to know?" So it's doing the same kind of work in a deposition of I want to get these things out if possible. And then designing your depo around that.

Jody Moore:

Right. And again, I think lawyers do understand that with regard to the rules. I think the rules of the road and Rick Friedman's work, and I think people do know I need to go in and get them to agree to the rules, and I think maybe it just fizzles out or stops there or becomes reactive. I keep coming back to it's very easy, it's very comfortable. I don't have to do a lot of homework to just follow where the witness wants to lead me. But I said this before, if I'm the director at trial, I'm also the director in the deposition. I want to direct where we are going, and so I want to have a more clear understanding of do I think I can get this point out of this witness? So it's not just this is the rule, I adopt the rule. It's what's important about the rule? I agree with the funnel, I agree with what's important about that and what happens if we break the rule? And if we break the rule and someone gets hurt, we're going to be responsible.

And there's really no excuse for breaking the rule, that's a choice. I love talking about choices that are made in deposition. It wasn't an accident that this thing happened, there was a choice that was made and there were other feasible alternatives. That might be a key point that I want to establish in a deposition is that there were lots of other options, it's not like this was the only way to do the thing, and so why weren't the other options explored? So showing feasibility of the other options might be really a key point. So I want to inspire, I guess, the deep work looking beyond just, "Well, here are the rules," and establishing we know that the rule was broken.

There's a lot more we can be doing strategically, and I think that when we get those strategic hits is when the cases shift. The defense already knows as well as we do, "Oh, this was the rule and it was broken." The question is what story is going to be told about that and how compelling is the story? And that's why we want to be trying to get more resonance, really, out of the witnesses and more connection out of the witnesses about the importance of those rules and how bad things can happen, people can really get hurt.

Sari de la Motte:

What's important about that, of getting that from them?

Jody Moore:

Because jurors are going to believe your story when it's coming out of the mouths of the defendants more than they're going to believe the story when it's coming out of your mouth or the mouth of the plaintiff or the people who are aligned with the plaintiff. And you've talked about that before, that there are studies that show that when the jury's hearing the information from the defense, it's more likely to persuade and motivate than when they're hearing that just out of the plaintiff's side.

Sari de la Motte:

And adds to that.

Marlo Arnolds:

Well, I want to pick on something that Jody said, which is about mindset. I think a lot of what happens when you're taking these depositions is we get triggered by defense counsel or we get triggered by what the expert's saying because we know there's an untruth. And it might not be explicit, but it's triggering for us. But if we come in with our own agenda and these are the principles, this is what I'm looking for, we're much less likely to fall down that rabbit hole that we're led on when we get triggered, which is, "I'm going to ask this question until I get the answer I'm looking for." Rather than being willing to move on and follow my own agenda instead of falling down the rabbit hole that I've been invited on by the expert.

Sari de la Motte:

I love that. I love that because it reminds me of when someone was at Power Presence seminar that we did years and years ago where she was like, "I just get so mad when they are distorting the truth. I need to defend the truth." And I said, "The truth does not need a defense, it needs a voice, and that's what your job is." So I love what you said because I've read those depositions where they're just trying to get this and you're like, "You're not going to get it. It's now battle of wills and it just looks terrible and it's draining and all the other things." Anything else we need to know about depth?

Jody Moore:

Well, I was just going to say to that point, that's where something like polarizing, a different technique is helpful, because one of the things we talked about is you can't expect to go into the depo and everyone's just going to give you your facts that support your why and those other facts. I don't want to be a Pollyanna about it. The attorney's going to get in the way. People are what's in it for me? How do I protect me and my business?

Sari de la Motte:

CYA.

Jody Moore:

Exactly. But we're like, "Okay, now at least we know that." That was one of the questions you asked me. It was like, "Well, why would you try to lead them down this path if they could fight back? And now they know where you're going and all that." It's like, "Well, the time for me to know where they're going is probably not a week before trial or in opening statement." I don't mind that I'm learning where they're planting their flag, and if they're planting their flag on some ridiculous proposition, some ridiculous theory that I know that my side is right and that side is wrong, then I'm just going to polarize at that point. I'll be like, "Keep planting your flag. Okay, am I really clear? What you're saying is when this happened, when the 18 wheeler rear ended the car that my passenger was in and the airbags deployed and the seatbelt locked and they hit their head on the steering wheel, what you're saying is that was not the cause of the brain injury. Did I get that right?"

Sari de la Motte:

Well, and I see what you're saying there, but I think there's a difference of I'm just going to keep going after this because I'm pissed versus I am being strategic and really getting this on record.

Jody Moore:

Yes.

Sari de la Motte:

Yes. Okay, that makes total sense.

Jody Moore:

Yeah. Yeah. So we do want to persevere, we don't want to give up, but we want to figure out, "Okay, they're either playing ball, they're going to give us something helpful, they're going to align with our principle, or they're going to lie or be deceptive or evade." And then I want to turn to the polarization. I want to be like, "Okay, well, I can use that answer, too." There is a mindset there where it's like, "I can use either answer."

Marlo Arnolds:

It's a lot like what we do in voir dire. The jury can't hurt you in voir dire, that's what we teach. It's a matter of how do I take what I'm being given and use it?

Sari de la Motte:

Yes.

Marlo Arnolds:

Same thing in a deposition as we have in voir dire.

Sari de la Motte:

Yeah. Oh, I love that. And I'm just thinking of Randi McGinn's thing. "The light was red, wasn't it?" "Well, I don't know." "The light was red, wasn't it?" "Well, I don't know." "So you're saying the light is green?" "Oh, no, no, no. I'm not saying that." And it's so great. I think she calls it her red-red-green or green-green-red or whatever, whichever way. I'm being very unartful about it. But yeah. So I think the point though is that are you being strategic versus just spinning and craziness and not really getting anywhere that you want to go?

Jody Moore:

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Sari de la Motte:

All right. So final thoughts on the H2H method as being applied to depos?

Jody Moore:

Do it. I think that's the part that has us so excited. I think that when we think about expanding the method, it's not a far leap for us to figure out all these tools that we're already using in voir dire and opening, and just figuring out, with very small tweaks, that they help us prepare for our deposition. And the sooner we do that, the more powerful those depositions will be.

Marlo Arnolds:

Yeah. I'm always going to come back to collaboration.

Sari de la Motte:

Chief collaborator.

Marlo Arnolds:

So as the chief collaborator, I think that the key point here is that you're going to be more prepared going into a deposition if you have done that collaboration piece, if you've worked with someone.

Sari de la Motte:

Well, I'm just going to ping on that because I think what you just said is so huge, because so many people say about why they don't join the crew is what? I don't have time. And what they don't recognize is that that time that they're spending collaborating with their fellow crew members is going to assist them so much. It's going to actually give them back time because they're going to get so much clearer so much faster and get better results and all of it.

Marlo Arnolds:

Well, I want to add to that, that you don't have to be the person bringing the case to learn. Just listening to other people's cases always teaches me about a case that I have or some issue that comes up and it's almost like it's faded. It's like the universe lines them up just so that I will learn from them the way that I need to.

Sari de la Motte:

My final thought on this, and the last couple podcasts that we've done together, is that all of these things take time to do to really do the deep work on your case. And what I want to podcast with you ladies on next is this idea, this business model that everybody has decided is how being a trial lawyer is and it's not serving you. And we've had some great conversations about how it can be done differently, because I think people listening to the podcasts are like, "This is great, but this takes time." All of the things we talk about in this podcast takes time.

And I guess what I want to say to everybody listening is we know, and we think that we're doing trial lawyering wrong, and that's one of the big things that we're here about. We're going to change the way law is practiced, and so part of this is an upcoming podcast on how we might start doing that. Well, thanks for listening everybody. Thanks you guys for being here while we just explore these things in the podcast, which we have to do more of now because if you want the real stuff, we've got to start hiding that as this becomes more popular behind the crew. So we're going to give you the stuff we're thinking about, but the stuff we figure out, that's behind in the crew.

Jody Moore:

Love it.

Sari de la Motte:

Thank you, Marlo. Thank you, Jody.

Marlo Arnolds:

Thank you.

Sari de la Motte:

Both coaches and consultants here at H2H, and we will talk to you again shortly. Thanks again.

Have you ever wished you knew what the jury was thinking? Well, grab a pen and paper because I’m about to give you instant access to a free training I created for plaintiff trial attorneys. It’s called Three Powerful Strategies to Help You Read a Juror's Mind, and it will help you understand what the jury is thinking so you can feel confident and trust yourself in the courtroom. 

Ready? Head to sariswears.com/jury and enjoy!