How to Dress for Your Deposition
from
July/August 2003
by Shaun Assael
There’s no such thing as casual Friday when it comes to depositions. Once the only person you styled for was the stenographer, and the only thing that mattered was the transcript. But those days are fading as fast as Tommy Hilfiger’s cachet. With courts allowing videotaped depositions to be used at trial, witnesses have to dress for the camera as much as for the jury.
Start with that striped purple shirt. It might have wowed them at the last board meeting, but did you know that stripes produce a dizzying effect on a small screen? A half-hour of you on videotape might make a jury feel as if it’s experiencing turbulence on a turboprop.
On the other hand, don’t reach for those white shirts that you buy in bulk, either. “White bleaches you out,” says John Gilleland, a psychologist with the Chicago jury consulting firm Browne DecisionQuest. “It makes you look pasty.” And pasty means sneaky. White shirts also show perspiration, something that inevitably projects untrustworthiness. Come to think of it, always wear a jacket.
As for that shirt, try a muted blue, perhaps with a red tie. But not too expensive a tie. Expensive reads as slick. And please, this is not the time for novelty ties. (It’s never the time for novelty ties.) “If you have to testify about how you reached a reasonable conclusion, you want to appear like someone who reasons seriously,” says John Gueli, a litigator with Shearman & Sterling in New York. That works in reverse, too: If you’re a CEO whose $10 million bonus has made the news, don’t show up in a cheap baggy suit.
Subtlety works best, which is why Gueli likes it when his witnesses arrive with understated touches. His favorite: an American flag clip on the lapel. “It reminds jurors of the president,” he says.
Women have it harder because . . . well, women always have it harder. Think conservative but not dowdy, feminine but not sexy. “The cleaner the lines the better,” suggests Gilleland. Hoop earrings, brooches, and multicolored scarves from Neiman Marcus are all out. Small, unobtrusive pearls are in. And need we even get into piercing?
Men should reconsider all jewelry, and not only for fashion’s sake. A watch and a wedding ring are enough. But try not to fidget with them; witnesses who do so look shifty. The same is true of those who slide their glasses up and down their nose. Says Gilleland: “I seldom try to make over a witness. But I do spend time watching their habits.”
If they rock back in their swivel chair, he’ll ask them to sit in one that doesn’t recline. Rocking makes a witness seem nervous (and some lawyers have been known to put deponents in swivel chairs, just to produce this effect). If his clients have a habit of fingering the papers in front of them, Gilleland will make sure that the table space is clear. Long pauses may not show up on a transcript, but they play like white noise on film—read “hiding something”—which is why Gilleland advises people to avoid them. And if he sees that a client routinely cuts off questioners in midsentence, Gilleland will warn against doing that in the witness chair. “This is like TV,” he says. “On Survivor, nobody likes the know-it-all.”
Federal rules warn that a witness’s appearance “shall not be distorted through a camera or sound-recording technique.” Undistorted doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be convincing, though. No one is saying that Microsoft had trouble in antitrust court because Bill Gates was filmed giving his deposition in dark shadows, but it couldn’t have helped that he looked like Citizen Kane.
Henry Hecht, a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law and a specialist in taking depositions, thinks it’s best to videotape witnesses from the shoulders up against a neutral background. “I tell my students that it may be a cliché,” he says, “but a picture paints a thousand words.” Well, that’s not quite how the cliché really goes, but it is worth heeding.
