The Deposition
Willpower disguised as seven straight hours of asking the same question.
Same Question, Seventh Hour
Seven hours in, you ask the question a fourth different way and finally, quietly, get the answer you were actually after. This is the Chariot's real power — not speed, but sustained, directed will, two opposing forces held in one steady line by nothing but your own refusal to let the pace slip.
The truth in a deposition rarely arrives on your schedule. It arrives on its own, worn down by patience, and your job is to stay in the seat long enough for it to show up. Let the endurance be the strategy today.
what may cross your path
- You ask a question a fourth different way and finally get the answer you were actually after.
- A witness's story shifts almost imperceptibly, and you're the only one who catches exactly where.
- You hold your pace through a lunch break that everyone else needed more than you let on.
- The court reporter's fingers slow down right when you finally land the real question.
I drive this forward one steady question at a time.
Objection, Form. Again.
You've objected to form so many times the court reporter has started rolling her eyes without looking up. This is the Chariot's forces pulling in opposite directions and no one steering — force spent defending ground that was never actually under threat, momentum burned on friction instead of forward motion.
Somewhere in the last hour, control turned into obstruction, and the record started reading less like a search for facts and more like a wrestling match nobody's winning.
what may cross your path
- You object on a technicality that everyone in the room, including you, knows is a stall tactic.
- The transcript reads more like a wrestling match than a search for facts.
- You realize you've spent forty-five minutes protecting a point that was never actually at risk.
- Opposing counsel starts finishing your objections for you before you say them.
Real control doesn't need to fight every inch.