Basics - To Tell the Truth

“I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't.”
― Mark Twain

The world is filled with liars, cheats and thieves. Unsurprisingly, more than a few find their way into our legal system, using our courts to try to make a buck at some other's expense. For the sake of this post, I am assuming that you are not one of those people. If you are, please unsubscribe to my blog; this information isn't for you. Besides, you couldn't use it as my advice always falls back onto one basic principle: You must tell the truth.

Most of us believe that we don't lie, and in that we lie to ourselves. We all lie every day. Most of the time it isn't with outright deception in mind. Instead, we lie to make others feel good, make us look better than we are, or to make something go smoother for us in a conversation. For instance, upon arriving home after a late work function where you had one beer your spouse asks if you were out drinking. You think to yourself, "One beer would hardly be considered 'out drinking', so I'll say 'No.'" So you do. And you get away with it. So you do it again later, just to make your life go a little easier.

There are good judges and attorneys, bad ones, smart ones, and dumb ones, but two things that they all have in common is that they have dedicated their careers to:

1. Learning the law
2. Figuring out who is lying

Don't tell little white lies. Don't try to simplify a discussion by lying. Don't rationalize a lie by thinking that it is such a little thing that it doesn't really matter. This wrongheaded reasoning will doom your deposition.

How do you avoid these pitfalls? Pause before you answer to see if you are going to tell the whole truth. Analyze every answer in your head before you state it out loud. Take your time. Pausing during a deposition is one of the few things that you have control of (and it won't appear on the transcript) so use it.