Preparing a Client for a Deposition the Press Will Read.

A deposition is not public when it is taken. It can become public the day a transcript or a clip is attached to a filing, quoted in a motion or played at trial, and in a case the press is watching, that day comes. Counsel prepares the client for the testimony. I prepare the client for the part where a sentence from it appears in a story, and for the gap between what they have said in public and what they say under oath.

The rule that governs it

Nothing a client says publicly, before or after, can differ from the testimony. That is counsel’s rule and mine. So before any interview, any statement, any post, the question is whether a defense lawyer could read it against the transcript. If the answer is yes, the public version waits. The cheapest way to lose a sympathetic case is a sympathetic client who said one thing to a reporter and another in a conference room.

What I walk through with the client

That a transcript can become public, and how: through a filing, a motion or trial. That the defense will read every public post they have ever made against it, going back years, so the accounts get reviewed before the deposition, not after a defense exhibit arrives. That a reporter who gets a quote from the transcript will call, and that the answer is counsel’s, not theirs. And that the plainest, most ordinary version of the truth, the one they would tell a neighbor, is the version that holds up in both rooms.

What I do with the transcript once it is public

Read it the way a reporter will, for the sentence that will be the headline. Have the public record ready around it, so the sentence is read in context rather than alone. And say nothing about expected testimony before it is given; that is in the comment to the trial publicity rule, and it is where the most careful lawyers still slip. Before you file, read your client’s feed → Media training for survivors and grieving families →