Berkeley Law: “Years ago, while consulting with law firms to help train their associates, Henry Hecht was asked to create a training program on depositions: how to take them, defend them, and prepare a witness for them. Not wanting to be a “talking head,” Hecht — Berkeley Law’s Herma Hill Kay Lecturer in Residence — designed a learning-by-doing workshop where associates took part in simulated depositions and got pointed feedback. “Offering a similar course at Berkeley Law was the natural next step,” he says. When Hecht began teaching at Berkeley Law in 1983, there were no offerings on Depositions — courses on how to try cases were seen as more relevant. But when a major study showed that in 2006 only 1.3% of U.S. district court civil cases reached trial, he proposed a course on Client Interviewing & Depositions. Discovering that a 14-week semester wasn’t enough to sufficiently cover both subjects, his course devoted purely to depositions was soon born. Hecht developed a carefully designed 14-week course where students conduct mock depositions, receive feedback in small groups, and glean valuable insights from both alumni litigators and Hecht. Last semester, nine Berkeley Law graduates — eight of them Hecht’s former students — came to offer pointers.

“I’ve been visiting Henry’s Depositions classes for about 15 years,” says Jeff Homrig ’01, a partner at Latham & Watkins and the firm’s intellectual property litigation vice chair, who took two courses with Hecht when he was a student. “Once I began to practice, I realized how important it is to gain practical experience in law school. Henry’s class gave me a great foundation to take depositions as a lawyer — real practical experience that pushed me up the learning curve. I’m deeply grateful for that, and I wanted to help pass that experience along to others.” Hecht invites litigators from wide-ranging backgrounds to showcase the legal community’s diversity — and the many paths to deposition success.  “They bring their own way of doing things to the problems at hand,” he explains. “My philosophy of skills teaching is that there’s more than one way to accomplish an objective. The guests demonstrate the truth of that approach.”…