Rant: The day opposing counsel quoted my old blog post in a deposition

I was defending a slip and fall case in Tulsa and the other lawyer pulled up a post I wrote 9 years ago about hating discovery deadlines, used it to imply I coach clients to stall. On one hand it's fair game, on the other it felt like a cheap shot at someone's personal writing. Does anyone else think using ancient personal posts against a lawyer should be off limits, or is that just part of the job now?

1 comments

1 Comment

henry_knight16d ago

Did the other side really need that post to make their point about stalls, or were they just trying to get under your skin? I get why it stings, but once you put words out there on the internet, they're kind of fair game in a deposition. You said yourself it's fair game, and that's the part I agree with. Opposing counsel is paid to find dirt, and a public blog post is easy dirt. It's not a cheap shot if it's directly on point about your attitude toward deadlines, even if it's nine years old. The real problem isn't that they quoted you, it's that you wrote something that could be twisted, and that's on the writer, not the reader.