In one of the cases I have coming up for trial this fall, the looming discovery deadline apparently took all the lawyers by surprise. Both sides unilaterally set a slew of depositions at the last minute.

You know what happens when depositions are unilaterally set: There is much weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, the end result of which is that the assistants involved spend half their waking hours changing the calendar, amending conference room reservations, and contacting the court reporters. Not to mention the ever-evolving travel arrangements.

Poor court reporters. Poor assistants. Poor me!

Necessity being the mother of invention, I created an Excel spreadsheet to keep up with the deposition calendar. I already had a spreadsheet that contained all the scheduling order deadlines, so I just added a tab for depositions.

Why not just use Outlook? Well, I do, but Outlook has no way of rendering a schedule as clean and readable as an Excel spreadsheet. Add to that the powerful sorting functions in Excel, and . . . well, there’s just no contest.

My deposition spreadsheet contains the following four tabs:

• Depos Scheduled.
  
• Depos Taken. So I have a record of what has already happened without cluttering my current schedule with old items.
• Depos to be Set/Reset. So I can see at a glance what’s coming down the pike.
• Notices Withdrawn. Because simply deleting them guarantees that a lawyer will ask me, “Whatever happened to the deposition of George Costanza? Why isn’t that on the schedule anymore?” Having this tab means I don’t have to sift through the 1200 e-mails that were sent last week to find the one where they notified us they don’t need George’s testimony after all.

In addition to the obvious Date, Time, Witness, and Location columns, each tab has columns for:

• Coverage. I make a note of who is covering the deposition. It’s important for one person to have a handle on who’s supposed to be where, to avoid embarrassing SNAFUs.
• Noticed by. This is mostly for me, so I can see at a glance which depositions I need to get a court reporter for, and which ones I need to schedule conference rooms for.
• Remarks. This is where I put any other pertinent information that comes my way or that I think someone might ask me about, like why the deposition is needed, whether it’s a trial deposition, and even notes on the witness’s background.

When it’s time to move a deposition from the “to be set” tab to the “scheduled” tab, it’s an easy cut-and-paste operation. And, because spreadsheets are easily sortable, it’s no problem to keep everything chronologically-listed. After adding a new deposition to the bottom of the list, I place my cursor in the date column, click the “AZ” sort button, and voila!

My deposition schedule spreadsheet is a work-in-progress, but it’s already saved me dozens of hours of extra work. Perhaps more importantly, it provides peace of mind for both me and my lawyers. At a glance, we can see what’s coming up, who’s covering it, and where it’s going to be. Sure makes it easier when I’m speaking to the court reporter and making travel arrangements.