Paul Bergman & Albert Moore 
Nolo’s Deposition Handbook 
The Essential Guide for Anyone Facing or Conducting a Deposition

Getting deposed? Conducting a deposition? Here’s the book you need to take the mystery out of the deposition process and answer questions with confidence. You’ll even learn the three ‘golden rules’ for answering questions and the trick questions lawyers often use to influence testimony.



A perfect book for law students, lawyers, legal assistants, witnesses, expert witnesses, and anyone who wants to represent themselves in court, Nolo’s Deposition Handbook provides all the information you need to sail through the deposition process with confidence. This edition contains updated statutes, cases, and rules — plus, new material on ‘electronic discovery’ which applies to information stored in computers, including records and emails.

Table of Content

Introduction: Your Deposition Companion

Part One: You Are a Deponent

1. An Overview of Deposition Procedures

2. Using Depositions in a Lawsuit

3. Preparing to Give Deposition Testimony

4. Responding to Questions

5. Beginning a Deposition: “The Usual Admonitions”

6. Background Questions

7. Questions You Can Refuse to Answer

8. Expert Witness Deponents

Part Two: Taking and Defending Depositions

9. The Lay of the Discovery Landscape

10. Defending a Deposition

11. Taking a Deposition: Deposing a Hostile Witness

12. Taking a Deposition: Responding to a Defending Attorney’s Roadblocks

13. Taking a Deposition: Deposing a Friendly Witness

14. Visually Recorded Depositions

Glossary

Appendix A: Excerpts From the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP)

Appendix B: State Discovery and Deposition Rules

Appendix C: Sample Forms

Index

About the author

Albert Moore, a member of the California State Bar since 1978, is a law professor at the UCLA School of Law and the co-author of Trial Advocacy: Inferences, Arguments and Trial Techniques (West Publishing).