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Deposition Summaries

Depositions tend to be a gold mine, a synthesis of not only the information collected by the plaintiff's attorney, but also the strategy and thinking of all of the other parties. As a result, the most logical place to start in doing serious trial preparation is to summarize depositions in excruciating detail.  Reading through depositions and taking occasional notes is fraught with dangers and may result in not only missing vital bits and pieces of information, but also making the task of trial preparation cumbersome and difficult.  A general summary of the deposition, dictated at the time the deposition was taken, is also no substitute for a page and line summary. 

The best approach is to utilize a page and line summary.  That is, every important point is noted as to its approximate page and line number, and its purpose is to find the material quickly during further preparation or trial.  If these summaries are carefully prepared, with sufficient detail, it may never again be necessary to refer to the depositions themselves, and you will have a much more manageable pile of papers with which to complete preparation and/or conduct the trial.  

A careful thought out page and line summary of a 100-page deposition may be only 10 pages long.  All of the attorneys and investigators involved in the preparation of the case for trial should receive copies of summaries to reduce cost of trial preparation and your experts. 

Summary Formats

The popular formats for deposition summaries are:
  • Page Summary
  • Line Summary
  • Topic Phrase
  • Three Column Format
We can also alter our formats to achieve any style or format you prefer.
  • Page summary is the most widely used way of summarizing depositions.  The format is simple and straightforward, but detailed enough to be a helpful index to the deposition. The volume of a good page summary should be 10-15% of the volume of the deposition itself. That is, if the deposition is 100 pages in length, the summary should be no more than 10-15 pages in length. 
  • Line summary is the same as page summary except, that the line numbers are set out with the page numbers to the left of the narrative.  The volume of the line summary should also be approximately 10-15% of the volume of the actual deposition.  The line summary is extremely useful for locating exact passages of testimony in a deposition transcript and is an excellent index to the transcript itself. 
  • Topic Phrase summaries are page summaries, which also include the topic of the summary for each paragraph or each page. 
  • Three Column summaries are almost exactly the same as the Topic Phrase summaries except that the topics are provided in a separate column instead of in the testimony column.   The Three Column Summaries can later be sorted by the topic of the summaries.                                                            
To view samples of deposition summaries, click on the following links:

Rates & Services

Our rates for standard deposition summaries (Page Summaries) are $1.75 per page.   There are no additional charges for expert depositions or trial transcripts.  Other formats are charged at the rate of $2.25 per page.

Standard turnaround for orders placed before 10 am Pacific Standard Time is 5-6 business days.   Rush assignments will be charged at $3.25 per page. The turnaround for rush assignments is 2-3 business days depending on the size of your deposition transcript.

You can either upload your digital deposition transcripts into our secure repository, or we can arrange for delivery of your deposition transcripts at your request.  The summaries are returned to you electronically via e-mail or via our secure repository in Word, WordPerfect, or PDF formats.