My dad's roommate from law school told me one time, right after I got into law school, that I needed to make sure I didn't try to be one of those mean woman attorneys who tries to act like a man. I'm still not sure what he was talking about, but I think it was probably the only time anyone has ever warned me not to act like a man. I went to a deposition last week where there were 19 men attorneys, three court reporters and me. It lasted all day. They didn't feed us.

Speaking of food, I wish I had saved some of those sandwiches from lunch. Are there any cookies left? I wonder how long I have to sit still and not be distracting before I can get up and leave and look for cookies. I'm so glad my firm

provided food. It is rude to make people sit through an all-day deposition and to not feed them. Torturous. Attorneys gotta eat or we get grumpy. My coffee is getting cold.

I think depositions are the reason that people don't like attorneys - because attorneys talk a different language than regular people and so attorney #1 can say something that makes no sense to a regular individual - but which makes total sense to another attorney. And the attorney is going to object to things that would seem proper to a normal person, but improper to an attorney.

Attorney #1 is trying to make the person being deposed say something very particular. Attorney #2 is trying to keep the person being deposed from saying whatever it is that #1 wants him to say through objections that are very possibly lost on the person being deposed.

So you end up having the same question rephrased quite a few times. And eventually the person being deposed feels like the attorneys are having a fight through him while at the same time leaving him out. It's like when parents are fighting through a child; the child doesn't understand what he said that was so important, he didn't mean to get daddy in trouble!

It's all very technical, and there seems to be a lot of room for error. But, basically, it is a completely new language and the regular person who is being deposed ends up feeling rather confused and left out, and we all hate to feel like that.

Good thing I'm an attorney and I'm not the one being left out. Maybe one day they'll even let me ask the questions.