Mock Depositions At Marquette University Law School
Milwaukee Court Reporter Volunteers At Marquette University Law School
By Linda Saari, Registered Merit Court Reporter
On Monday February 27, 2012, at the invitation of David Hanson of Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren, I was asked to be the reporter for a class that he teaches entitled “Intellectual Property Workshop” at Marquette University Law School for second and third year law school students. The class was also taught by Jonathan Margolies of Michael, Best & Friedrich and Lisa Kass of Reinhart Boerner. David, Jonathan and Lisa are adjunct professors at the law school.
Although this may seem like an unusual assignment, I had previously been invited by David to participate in his class on three prior occasions going back to 2003. The prior classes were held at the former Sensenbrenner Hall, but Monday evening’s class was held at the new state-of-the-art Eckstein Hall.
At the beginning of the class David introduced me and asked a few questions of me about depositions, especially the importance of having attorneys and witnesses to the deposition speaking one at a time, and also to explain how and what we write on our little machines.
In preparation for the class I had asked David to provide me with a roster of the students’ names so that I could input their names into a job dictionary for the class.
The students had prepared for the case of Airway Industries, Inc. v. Pirate, Inc., a case in which Airway Industries alleges that its Airway zipper bag was infringed by Pirate, Inc.’s Roll ‘N Go bag. The students were divided into two teams – Team Airway and Team Pirate. Each student was given five minutes to question a witness, or witnesses of their choice, and then the questioning would pass to the next student. There was sufficient class time for the students to have two rounds of questioning.
The students were given a list of seven names of witnesses for the parties that they could depose; they would just have to indicate the witness’ name during their portion of the deposition. They even had me read back!
David and Jonathan would role play as the various witnesses and/or the attorney that would make objections to the students’ questions.
At various times during the questioning David or Jonathan would indicate to go off the record. They would offer suggestions or hints to the students on their questioning, advice on how to keep narrowing their questions to obtain maximum information from the witnesses, how to handle a difficult witness, and a witness that would give long answers. After questioning by each student David and Jonathan would offer a critique of the student’s questioning before moving on to the next student.
I also provided a transcript to David so that he could distribute it to the students for their benefit.
I enjoyed working with the students at Marquette Law School. I wish them all success as they embark upon their legal careers.
Tags: mock depositions
April 11th, 2012 at 8:32 pm
Thanks for spending your personal time with the law students at Marquette. I think it’s very important for young lawyers to get a real hands-on kind of view of all the aspects of a deposition. I’m sure it was very helpful to them.