Prepare a deposition outline for a witness
Builds a topic-by-topic examination outline with goals, questions, exhibits, and admissions to lock in.
The prompt
Help me prepare a deposition outline.
Witness: [name, role, relationship to the parties, friendly or adverse]
Case summary and claims/defenses: [SHORT]
What I need from this witness: [e.g. "admit receipt of the notice", "establish timeline", "lock in lack of knowledge"]
Key documents / exhibits: [LIST with IDs and one-line descriptions]
Known facts and prior statements by this witness: [SUMMARY]
Time available: [e.g. "7 hours"]
Jurisdiction / rules: [court and any limits]
Build the outline:
1. Goals - 3-5 specific admissions or facts to lock in, ranked.
2. Preliminaries - background, preparation for the deposition, documents reviewed, who they spoke with.
3. Topic modules - for each topic: purpose, exhibits to use, and a sequence of short, single-fact questions moving from open ("what happened") to closed ("you received this on March 3, correct?").
4. Exhibit plan - when to introduce each exhibit and the foundation questions needed.
5. Lock-in questions - exhausting the witness's knowledge ("anything else?", "anyone else?").
6. Risk areas - topics that could hurt us, and whether to avoid or address them.
7. Time budget per topic.
Keep questions short and non-compound. Do not invent facts or document contents; mark gaps [CONFIRM FROM FILE]. This is a preparation aid; the examining lawyer must review it against the record and applicable rules.
Highlighted [brackets] are blanks to replace with your own details.
Fill in the blanks and use this promptMore Legal & Compliance prompts
What to fill in
- name, role, relationship to the parties, friendly or adverse
- SHORT
- LIST with IDs and one-line descriptions
- SUMMARY
- e.g. "7 hours"
- court and any limits
- CONFIRM FROM FILE
How this prompt is built
This prompt follows the Few-Shot structure (Few-shot prompting). A few-shot prompt includes one or more worked examples of the input and the output you want, so the model can copy the pattern instead of guessing it.
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