The Client Who Pays, the Party Who Wants the Raw File, and the Subpoena
You are retained and paid by the noticing party in a personal-injury deposition. During a break, plaintiff counsel speaks to you out of the room and says the witness is "about to say something he'll regret," and asks you to keep the camera tight on his face and keep rolling whatever defense counsel says - and not to mention the request to defense counsel. After the deposition, defense counsel's paralegal calls and asks you to email her the raw file directly, "to save the court reporter time." Two weeks later the noticing attorney asks you to delete the 12 minutes in which his client lost his temper, saying it is irrelevant and prejudicial. The same week, the witness's treating physician serves a subpoena for the footage.
1. How do you handle the private request to keep a tight frame and stay quiet about it?
Read the worked answer
Refuse the secrecy, not the recording.
- Framing is not to be set by covert instruction from one side. A camera that tightens just before a damaging answer, at one party's private request, produces a record that looks engineered - and it is engineered.
- Say so where it is captured, or immediately after the break on the record: "Counsel asked me off the record to change framing; I don't take camera direction privately, and I'm noting the request." This is not disloyalty to your client; it is what makes your work defensible for your client.
- Payment does not create a duty to favor the payer. You are retained by a party but you produce a record for the proceeding; the standard is accuracy and even-handedness.
- Log the incident with time, speaker, and content.
If the same request comes again in writing, keep the writing. If it comes as an instruction to conceal, that is the point at which you tell the retaining attorney you cannot proceed on those terms.
2. Opposing counsel's paralegal asks you to send the raw file directly. What is your response and why?
Read the worked answer
"No, not directly, and here is why" - said politely, in writing.
- You cannot verify authority from a phone call. You do not know that the paralegal speaks for the firm, and a misdirected raw file cannot be recalled.
- Delivery runs through the officer or as the rules and any stipulation provide. In most practice the recording is produced through the deposition officer or under the scheduling order; a videographer who distributes copies to whoever asks becomes an uncontrolled second source of the record.
- Offer the correct path: tell her you will provide the file to the officer for production, or upon written request from the attorney of record with the retaining attorney's written agreement, or as the court directs.
- Document the request - who called, when, what was asked.
This is a custody question before it is a courtesy question. The record must have one traceable chain, and you are the one who keeps it.
3. The retaining attorney wants 12 minutes deleted, and a subpoena arrives from a non-party physician. Address both.
Read the worked answer
Treat these as one problem: the recording is now evidence that other people have a claim on.
Deletion request. Decline, and confirm the refusal in writing. The original is preserved unaltered; you will produce an excerpt if the parties agree and it is labeled as an excerpt, but you will not destroy the source. Reasons: the material may be discoverable; the physician's subpoena makes destruction far worse than the temper loss; and a videographer who deletes at a party's request has destroyed their own credibility as a witness about the recording.
Subpoena. Do not ignore it and do not simply comply. Notify the retaining attorney and all counsel of record promptly, in writing, so objections can be raised within the return period. Comply only as the subpoena or a protective order requires, producing no more than is demanded; if confidential or sealed material is implicated, seek direction before production. Keep a copy of everything you produce and a log of when and to whom.
Your job across both is preservation and disclosure, not advocacy for either side.