Practical Guidance for Virtual Depositions Under Pandemic Conditions by Michael T. Gwinn How do you pass a document across a table 2,000 miles long? Attorneys across the United States and abroad have had to grapple with these and other questions while conducting depositions during the pandemic. Virtual conference platforms have proven to be useful for conducting depositions in the face of social distancing and travel restric-tions. Virtual depositions provide unique challenges. This article provides practical advice on how to conduct virtual depositions with as few deviations from normal practice as possible. Special Considerations for Virtual Depositions In-person depositions require a minimum of four parties: the deponent, the attorney taking the deposition, the attorney defending the deposition, and the court reporter. Virtual depositions require a fifth role: the confer-ence technician. The conference technician’s responsibility is to host and moderate the conference room and to display documents on screen as requested. The attorney acting as second chair can fill this role if necessary, but it is a distraction and not recommended. The conference technician is involved in the minute to minute operation of the virtual deposition platform. The second chair will not be available for other tasks if they are preoccupied with showing exhibits and muting microphones. Additionally, most court reporter companies provide a confer-ence technician at no extra charge as part of their virtual deposition service. Second, more stakeholders will attend virtual depositions than in-person deposi-tions. Many stakeholders will not observe in-person depositions because of the travel time and expense as well as practical limits on the number of people that can fit in the room. Virtual depositions do not require travel and there are no practical limits to the number of people that can attend. Attorneys taking vir-tual depositions can expect a larger audience and more client involvement than normal. Finally, the attorney taking the deposi-tion has less control over virtual depositions. Internet connections can fail and computers can crash. Attorneys taking virtual deposi-tions should make contingency plans in case a technical failure brings the deposition to a sudden end. 20 VIRGINIA LAWYER | AUGUST 2020 | VOL. 69 | GENERAL INTEREST FEATURES www.vsb.org
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Practical Guidance For Virtual Depositions Under Pandemic Conditions
Michael T. Gwinn
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