Courtroom Drama: How the Pros Depose
Enter J. Neil Boyle.
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“In real life,” Boyle explained, “if a person lives more than 100 miles from court, unless he’s a material witness he can’t be subpoenaed to appear.” What a lawyer does, then, is go to the witness and, in the presence of opposing counsel–who can interrupt and object just as he would in a courtroom–grill him. The transcript of the testimony–the deposition–can then be brought into court and read out loud.
As a letter of solicitation that Boyle is just now getting in the mail puts it, “Our professional readers . . . provide the courtroom with more than the mere words recorded in a deposition; they bring you the tone, the inflection, and even the state of mind you noticed when the deposition was taken.”
“Yeah, he was. He was a jerk,” said the attorney. So Boyle played him that way, with such style that finally counsel for the defense spoke up and the bench “asked me to cut down on my dramatic pauses a little bit.”
We asked Stephen Sandels of McDermott, Will & Emery what he made of Boyle’s operation.
“The jury, I don’t think that they knew that they were actors. I don’t know who they thought they were.”
