The Hot Seat
Today I am sitting in the breakfast room wearing a blue suit and tie, like I did for the better part of forty-five years during my working life on Wall Street. As much as I am unused to strapping on my business armor at this point in life, I ws never that bothered by dressing the part during my working life. I had gone to four years of prep school during my teens and had learned to wear a suit and tie without any difficulty. Needless to say, my college years didn’t call for too many instances of suiting up, but by my year in business school I was back in the swing. In fact, I recall thinking as a graduating senior the year before, while wearing a sport coat and tie at a University function at which I was a representative to the business community, that I joked about being prepared to strap on a pin-stripped suit. The truth was that I had never really owned a pin-stripped suit, so in business school I went to the clothing discounter of those days, Syms, and rummaged through the racks of discounted garments to find a blue and grey pin-stripped suit. Lucky for me that I only needed two suits in those days because the other choices on that day were a light green suit and a black suit. No one in banking ever survived wearing a green suit (I suppose that involved something about the color of money) and black was not yet the new anything in the business world. Black was strictly for funerals (in or out of the casket). But today I am back to being fully suited with an almost royal blue suit that I would have avoided like the plague in my heyday as being too bold, preferring the deep navy blue of Brooks Brothers. Strangely enough, Brooks Brothers main Madison Avenue store is right across the street, but I am still going with the more modern brighter blue suit since that is far more fashionable.
Given the sheer yardage involved, the suit is the big part of the outfit, but the more telling parts are the details of the shirt and tie. I have had all my suits and shirts custom made for the better part of forty years now since I have found that off-the-rack has not yet figured out how to properly fit me. I can get stuff that’s big enough, it just never seems to fit right around the collars or cuffs. Today I have shocked a light blue shirt with small windowpane white cross-hatching. I only do shirts with button cuffs, having forsaken the affectation of cuff links years ago. I also never bothered with monograms and that has allowed my shirts to last a lot longer, I reckon. My shirts are all tagged on the tail with my name and the date of fabrication. It’s not unusual to put on a shirt and then realize its over twenty years old. I have over 300 shirts accumulated, so they don’t get excessive wear if I am reasonable about my rotation. Today I am wearing an almost new shirt made in 2017. As for the tie, I have thinned that herd even more than I have thinned my suit collection since retiring. Not only do I have less occasion to suit up, but the trend on Wall Street is to rarely wear ties any more at all. Today I am wearing a nice foullarde in red with hints of matching blue that says it came from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was never an Hermes or other fancy Euro brands, so I was more conservative than most of my cadre in that regard. I could get into socks and shoes, but that is where I draw the line between fashion and comfort as I have gotten older. I used to wear nothing but Allen Edmunds, the all-American business shoe, and I still have a few pairs since they wear like iron, but I prefer a lighter loafer like the Cole Hahn’s I am wearing, since they work for business or casual.
So why all the dressing up today? After three days of deposition preparation, during which I wore khakis and a button-down shirt (and was almost over-dressed in the legal conference room where we worked), today I am on stage. I am being deposed in a case where I am an expert witness. I spent less than 100 hours several months ago preparing and revising my expert report to give my three fundamental opinions requested for this case. Those opinions are incredibly simple and straightforward, but the evidence that underlies them is very voluminous. In fact, I have what amounts to seven or eight bound books of cited evidence, about two feet worth of paper all tabbed and referenced to the paragraphs in my report where I lay out the basis for my opinions. All of that is why I have now spent almost 120 hours in deposition preparation both on my own and with my lawyers. I will have my lightly annotated report (60 pages) and the seven volumes of evidence with me in the deposition room today, but did so much preparation so that I can have good recall on how best to reference the materials that underlie my report. There is always some foundational instruction from the lawyers on how to run a good deposition, which boils down to keeping your answers short and to the point and not rambling on. Then there is a fair bit of time spent doing mock questioning where you get your game face on for the deposition.
Depositions are the middle step in the litigation process for an expert witness like me. The first stage involves reading in on the case and doing the analysis so you can write your report. The last stage (if things go that far) is the testimony at trial or arbitration. Testimony is a relatively civilized process and is less like Perry Mason than not. There are boundaries about what the opposition can ask you and guardrails of propriety as to how they ask it. But depositions are the Wild West of the litigation process. Basically, the opposing lawyers have read your report and prepared a number of questions in an attempt to undermine your report as much as they possibly can. They have relatively free reign for what amounts to seven hours today to come at with every manner of question, twisted whatever way they want. I feel well prepared, but there is no denying that today I will be on the hot seat, earning my keep as an expert testifying witness.
What always makes this process easier for me are three things. To begin with, forty-five years of being on one of the hottest seats each and every day is an advantage. There are few places in business that are more rough and tumble than Wall Street, and being in those senior ranks has prepared me well for almost anything. I am hard to intimidate. Second, I think long and hard about the cases I take and the opinions I give. That means that I am always on solid ground about where I stand and why. That is extremely important because believing in your position gives you considerably more confidence and standing. And last, but not least, I am always a big believer in preparation. The difference between giving a poor and a great speech or lecture is always about how well prepared you are. It’s about giving yourself confidence, for sure, but it’s also about organizing a complex array of facts and arguments in the most compelling manner.
So while I am on the hot seat today, I am totally comfortable being there. I’m ready and even eager to engage and support my opinions. Now I just have to remember when to stop and just answer yes, no or I don’t know. That will be my big challenge in having a successful encounter today.