Medical Malpractice Deposition Checklist for Plaintiff Attorneys (2026)

A good med-mal deposition wins motions before trial. A great one makes settlement inevitable. This checklist walks through what a plaintiff attorney should do in the three weeks before, the morning of, and during a deposition of a defendant physician or opposing expert.

3-4 Weeks Before

1 Week Before

Morning Of

During the Deposition

Opening 30 minutes: qualifications and scope

Slow. Methodical. Lock down the witness's specialty, board certifications, clinical practice description, and experience with this specific issue. Get concessions early about scope — if they're a cardiologist, pin them to cardiology (so they can't later testify about pulmonology).

Middle 60-90 minutes: methodology and data

This is the meat. Walk through what records they reviewed, what methodology they applied, what differential diagnosis they followed. Every "I didn't review that" is a Rule 702(b) attack surface.

Final 30-45 minutes: impeachment and trap questions

Use the prior inconsistent testimony. Use the literature contradictions. Get the hard admissions you need. Watch the AI tool flag internal contradictions in real time — the expert almost always contradicts something they said 90 minutes ago by this point.

Closing 5 minutes: clean-up

"Is there any aspect of your opinion you hold with less than reasonable medical certainty?" "Is there anything we discussed today you want to clarify or correct?" Answers here get taped to the record for trial.

After the Deposition

Common pitfalls

• Asking open-ended questions after minute 60. Shift to yes/no in the second half — open-ends let the expert ramble and rehabilitate.
• Not reading the prior depositions carefully. If you haven't read every word of the expert's prior testimony in comparable cases, you'll miss the impeachment gold. AI tools can surface matches but the attorney still has to recognize them in context.
• Forgetting to lock down definitions early. Don't let the expert redefine terms later ("well, when I said standard of care earlier, I meant...").
• Ignoring AI flags. If the tool flags a prior-testimony contradiction, address it THAT SESSION. The trial is worse for impeachment a year later when memories are stale.

Related reading

• How to Daubert Challenge an Expert Witness
• How to Impeach a Medical Expert Witness: 8 Techniques
• Medical Malpractice Discovery Checklist