On-Site Assistance

Years ago, while consulting with law firms to help train their associates, Henry Hecht was asked to create a training program on depositions: how to take them, defend them, and prepare a witness for them. Not wanting to be a “talking head,” Hecht — Berkeley Law’s Herma Hill Kay Lecturer in Residence — designed a learning-by-doing workshop where associates took part in simulated depositions and got pointed feedback.

“Offering a similar course at Berkeley Law was the natural next step,” he says.

There were no offerings on depositions at the time — courses on how to try cases were considered more relevant. But that changed after a major study showed that in 2006 only 1.3% of U.S. district court civil cases reached trial.

Hecht carefully designed a course where students conduct mock depositions, review them in small groups, and glean insights from both alumni litigators and Hecht. Last semester, nine Berkeley Law grads — including eight of his former students — came to offer pointers.

“Henry’s class gave me real practical experience that pushed me up the learning curve,” says Latham & Watkins partner Jeff Homrig ’01. “I’m deeply grateful for that, and I wanted to help pass that experience along to others.”

Hecht invites litigators from wide-ranging backgrounds to showcase the legal community’s diversity — and the many paths to deposition success. They emphasize reading cues from witnesses and opposing attorneys, and how to use tone, pace, volume, body language, and personality to influence their behavior.

“As a paralegal and a summer associate, I’d watch lawyers try things during depositions and ask myself, ‘Are they really allowed to do that?’” says 3L Jenna Forster. “It was great to learn the rules of the road and what those rules actually look like in practice.”

Each semester, Hecht recruits UC Berkeley undergraduates to act as witnesses.

“Preparing witnesses is an important part of deposition practice,” he says. “I wanted them to be people my students hadn’t met before to make the simulations more realistic.”

Hecht also enlists outside student court reporters to transcribe testimony for review, video records his students taking and defending depositions, and meets with them individually outside of class to review their videos, allowing for a deep dive.

“It puts each student in the cockpit repeatedly,” Homrig says. “They get used to their role, have to make decisions on the fly, and see what worked and what didn’t.”

King & Spalding associate Bailey Langner ’15 notes that without such a class, a deposition’s mechanics — marking exhibits, going on and off the record, having every word recorded — can intimidate new lawyers.

“The experience I got in Henry’s class gave me the confidence to take my first deposition as a first-year associate,” she says. “In turn, the early successes I had gave the partners at my firm confidence that I could handle myself, leading to additional opportunities.”

— Andrew Cohen