In Oregon they don't do many depositions.  They have trial by ambush.  At times I wish we had that kind of a system in Washington.  Instead, we've decided it is most fair to exchange information.  I've been in thousands of depositions by now.  Because I'm not paid by the hour but rather by percentage, I have no desire to waste time.  I've taken depositions in as little as 15 minutes and as long as a couple of days.  In general I can get information out of a party or an expert in two hours or less.

My opponents get paid by the hour.  This means they can waste time.  This means generally they do waste time.   Today for example, the defense lawyer spent two and a half retched hours before he asked our expert what his opinions were in the case.  Two and a half precious hours of life asking questions about things like where the expert worked a decade ago.  Even though the lawyer already knew this information.   My hair was standing on end I swear.  As bad as this was, I've suffered through worse.  At least this lawyer was an intelligent time waster.

One of the benefits of being ADD or whatever it is that I am, is that I can do more than one thing at the same time.  This means I don't have to just sit there and suffer until I explode.  Here is the list of things that I do when depositions get boring.  This only happens when the other side is asking questions as I'm always fascinating.

• eat something - today I ate an entire pint of raspberries in the morning and half a pomegranate - seed by painstaking seed in the afternoon.  It was worth the mess.
• take off my shoes and put my feet up on another chair
• answer and send email
• write letters
• write legal documents
• write seminar papers
• email my staff to see how they are
• see how many linkedin contacts I have as compared to Kevin (my partner is way ahead of me, drat)
• catch up on my facebook friends
• fall asleep - this is bad but rare so long as my computer is working I can avoid this
• blog
• text with my children
• stand up and pace
• watch nala on the downtown dog lounge web cam
• go to the bathroom every hour just because it's more interesting than what's going on in the room
• drink tea which gets cold quickly so I need to make more tea to drink which gets cold quickly repeat
• roll my eyes
• wiggle around in the chair
• read the news online
• twitter

Being in a boring deposition is painful.  So long as we can pay attention and protect the witness by objecting appropriately, there's nothing wrong with lessening the agony.