What Physicians Should Know Before a Deposition
Date: September 9, 2026
Author: Dr. Cohen
Medical Director, Specialty Experts
I just finished a deposition. Here's what I'd tell any physician who's about to sit for one.
1. Know the records better than anyone else in the room.
Not just your own report and the depositions. The whole chart. If opposing counsel finds something in there that you didn't, the rest of your testimony gets graded against that moment.
2. Bring your best, most organized copy.
Mine is an iPad synced to Dropbox, with my notes and highlighting in it. You're allowed to have the record in front of you. Guessing at a date or an operative finding from memory helps nobody.
Two things worth knowing about that. First, if you use your annotated copy to refresh your memory while testifying, opposing counsel can generally ask to see it. So, keep the annotations to things you'd be comfortable reading out loud. Mine are page references and clinical shorthand. Nothing else.
Second, you control the pace. If they ask for something and you can't put your hands on it quickly, ask them to pull it up and mark it as an exhibit. Some attorneys will try to sell the room on the idea that you should know all four thousand pages cold because of what you're paid. You don't have to accept the premise.
3. Produce everything you reviewed before the deposition, to the deposing attorney and to the attorney who hired you.
Don't assume the list your retaining attorney has is complete, well sorted, or that it ever made it to the other side. There are usually thousands of pages, and it's likely you weren't sent all of them. Build your own list and get it out early. If something surfaces for the first time at the table, you're no longer an expert who missed a document. You're an expert who looks like he's hiding one.
4. Don't write anything you're not prepared to defend.
Emails, margin notes, a draft paragraph you deleted. Assume it can be read out loud, slowly, by someone who wants you to look bad.
5. Keep the substance of your conversations with counsel on the phone.
Not to hide anything, and not because those communications are unprotected. In federal cases most attorney-expert communication is shielded, with carve-outs for your compensation, the facts and data you were given, and any assumptions you were asked to make.
It's simpler than that. A half-finished thought in an email is not your opinion, but it can be read to a jury as though it were. Say it out loud instead. And once a case is live, don't delete anything, ever. That is a far worse problem than any email you wish you hadn't sent.
6. Know your opinions cold.
I keep a one-page sheet of my opinions and the basis for each. If I'd be comfortable handing it across the table, it's the right document.
7. You are paid for time, not outcome.
Not for a verdict. Not for a side. For hours worked. Say it that plainly when you're asked, because you will be asked, and any hesitation on that question does more damage than the answer ever could.
The other thing that changed this for me: I stopped running the administrative side out of my own office. As medical director of Specialty Experts, I see both ends of it now. Records handling, scheduling, invoicing, and retention paperwork done by people who do it every day, for less than it costs a surgical practice to do it badly.
Do the medicine. Let Specialty Experts do the logistics.
Preparing for an upcoming case? Let's start the conversation.
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