u/Delicious-Win6734

Is there a better feeling than when the depo turns into a full‑blown audio demolition derby — overlapping questions, objections mid‑syllable, witness answering the wrong attorney, two people insisting “No, I wasn’t done,” and one guy who thinks shouting is a form of punctuation — and somehow still nail the readback like a seasoned Jedi.

Today I finish reading back this entire page of chaos, on the spot btw, and the room goes dead silent.

Both attorneys are just staring at me, processing what they actually said.

Then one goes, “Can you read that again?”
So I do.

The attorney was like "See. So now we've heard it two times."

And the other attorney, after hearing it TWICE, goes:
"I didn’t hear that.”

Anyway, if anyone needs me, I’ll be basking in the tiny, fleeting glory of being the only person in the room who actually knew what was said.

I just had an attorney with the slowest fastest cadence I’ve ever heard. Legit false‑started every single question with like three random words, then completely changed direction.

He’d ask full questions one word at a time, letting 3–5 seconds of dead air hang between each word… and then suddenly jump to 300 wpm at the very end like he was trying to win a drag race.

And the best part? The witness started mimicking his speech pattern. So now I’ve got two people doing slow‑motion false starts followed by surprise speed bursts.

Total time: 3.5 hours for 70 pages.

Not a big deal — just one of the more interesting speech patterns I’ve had to wrangle lately.

I know I’m not the only one.