For those who haven't seen, the New Mexico Attorney General released tapes of the depositions for Zuckerberg [1] and Sandberg [2].
Typical "lawyer is so stupid, she's asking dumb questions, repetitive questions"
Yeah, people - it's a deposition. Getting Zuck to blab is what they're looking for
They ask repeated questions repetitive questions hoping that you slip up/contradict yourself.
He said it was an interest experience trying to repeat exactly the same answers he’d already given.
It was 6 hours where the opposing counsel tried to rattle me / get under my skin with insulting questions.
To be clear, I was only an expert witness in the lawsuit (drug + pregnant lady + birth defects). It paid extremely well, but was something I would never want to do routinely.
At the end of the deposition, the lawyer had to catch a flight to the west coast and she asked ME if I would drive her to the airport* (she said she'd pay me my hourly rate)!
At that point it was clear that the insults were just theater and "part of the job", but I took it all too personally and told her I had to get home.
* She was late for the flight and Uber wasn't a thing yet.
Unless you want to completely overturn the way criminal trials are conducted in the Anglo American judicial tradition.
Many of the courtroom customs were partly influenced by this. For example the Robes/gowns or the emphasis on "law as an absolute", higher standard that sits above personal feelings is also inspired from Christian natural law ideas (i.e rulers and judges under a higher law) even though those ideas were built on Roman foundations.
So the kind of person who can treat the rules as more important than their own feelings isn't that surprising in that tradition. It requires a certain bit of.. religiosity.
whenever some unsavory person is in the news being defended by his attorney, most of us get upset, but they say stuff like, "his attorney is just doing a good job defending his client. that's how this works."
I get it, but I'm not built for it.
That'll fix everything.
If an obvious murderer isn't found guilty, I'm not upset at their lawyer. I'll be real pissed at the prosecution or whoever fucked up the evidence.
Was the lawyer that hired you present when she made the offer to pay you? If not, I'll cynically assume she was trying to entangle you in some conflict-of-interest ploy to keep you from being called as an expert at the trial.
Yes. "my" lawyer was there, too.
I tried to keep the story short, but the request was actually that I drive both of them to the airport.
I know it sounds naive, but I was shocked by their friendliness after the deposition.
That but also I would imagine getting information on the record from the exhibits etc.
They really got her with the 'Explain how an API works' interview question ha