A deposition transcript is a data input. The quality of that data determines what you can do with it, and AI has changed what “doing something with it” actually means.

The attorneys getting the most out of AI aren’t just using it to review transcripts after the fact. They’re using it before the deposition to prepare, during the deposition to build a cleaner record, and after to extract more than a manual review ever could. Each phase compounds the next.

Prep With AI Before Your Deposition

Strong preparation starts with knowing your witness. AI makes that research faster and more thorough, particularly for expert witnesses.

Running an expert’s prior testimony, published papers, and public positions through AI can surface inconsistencies between what they’ve argued in past cases and what they’re expected to say in yours. An expert who has taken a conflicting position on record is an expert you can impeach and whose credibility you can undermine. AI finds those conflicts much faster than manual research.

The same approach applies for fact witnesses. Prior deposition transcripts, public records, and anything else in your file can be processed quickly, so you have a clear picture of your deponent before they sit down.

Build Your Question Set

Once you know your witness, AI can help sharpen what you ask them. Running the complaint, answer, discovery responses, and prior deposition transcripts through AI surfaces gaps and contradictions worth probing. Even if you prefer to personally draft your deposition questions, running those through AI can ensure there aren’t any angles you may have missed.

Tailor for AI During Your Deposition

AI tools are only as useful as the transcript they're working from. How you conduct the deposition affects what you can do with it afterward.

Name People and Entities Consistently

Establish a consistent way to refer to each entity and stick to it. Because AI processes text literally, if a transcript refers to the same person as “Mr. Johnson,” “Johnson,” “he,” and “the defendant,” your tool may not recognize all of those as the same individual, depending on the platform and context.

The same principle extends to uncommon terms and acronyms. Ask the witness to spell out or define them because AI handles ambiguous jargon poorly. Watch your pronoun usage for the same reason. The context surrounding “he said to him” can fall through the cracks in a 300-page transcript.

Keep Questions, Dates, and Exhibits Clean

Keep questions singular. Compound questions produce one answer that could apply to either part of the question, and there’s no reliable way to parse which part of the question the witness meant to address.

Anchor dates and times explicitly. “Around then” and “a few months later” create gaps that AI cannot fill when constructing a timeline later.

When introducing new exhibits, make sure to say so out loud: “I’m showing you what’s been marked as Exhibit 4.” Then continue to refer to the exhibits explicitly. AI cannot see the room, and a transcript that references documents without naming them creates problems later. The same logic applies to tone. If a witness answers sarcastically, correct it by asking them to confirm their answer.

Use AI For Transcript Review Post-Deposition

Once the deposition is over, the transcript becomes a working document. AI significantly expands what you’re able to do with it. Steno’s Transcript Genius is built for this kind of work, allowing you to interrogate transcripts conversationally, summarize testimony, and locate relevant passages without manual review. Any deposition booked through Steno includes access to Transcript Genius’ AI capabilities at no additional cost.

Find Contradictions

AI can cross-reference testimony across every transcript in your case file. If one witness’s account of the timeline conflicts with another’s, AI will find it. You can also prompt AI to pull every statement a witness made on a specific subject, resulting in a clean set of citations you can use for impeachment prep or motion support without reading hundreds of transcript pages line by line.

Refresh Before Trial

Depositions are often taken months or even years before trial. By the time you’re preparing to examine a witness, re-reading several 400-page transcripts cold is not the best use of your time.

Run your transcripts through AI and you’re instantly provided with summaries, key passages, and flags on anything that stands out. AI-generated deposition summaries can be shared to everyone on the team—even those who joined after the deposition—providing a shared baseline without anyone having to read the full record.

The attorneys getting the most out of AI aren’t waiting until the transcript arrives. They’re working backward from what they want AI to do—and building a record that supports it from the first question they ask.

Ready to see what Transcript Genius can do for your practice? Book a demo.