Robert Ambrogi Blog
AltaClaro, the legal training company that builds simulation-based experiential learning, is today launching DepoSim, an AI-powered deposition simulator developed in partnership with Verbit.ai, the verbal intelligence and transcription technology company.
The product is designed to give litigators unlimited, on-demand opportunities to practice conducting depositions in realistic scenarios, then receive structured, objective feedback on how well they performed.
The new platform puts attorneys in realistic, on-demand deposition practice sessions – complete with an AI witness, opposing counsel and court reporter – and delivers detailed rubric-based feedback when it is over.
The launch follows testing with a notable early-adopter cohort that participated in a five-week beta pilot. The cohort includes six Am Law 100 firms: Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe; K&L Gates; McDermott Will & Emery; Littler Mendelson; Taft Stettinius & Hollister; and Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.
According to the companies, participants logged more than 160 hours of testing, and 97% strongly agreed that DepoSim is valuable for litigation training, while 94% said they would use it again.
The Problem It Aims to Solve
Deposition training has long been a gap in associate development at large law firms, AltaClaro says, with he traditional options – hiring actors for role-play exercises or sending associates to off-site programs – being expensive, logistically cumbersome and infrequent.
More fundamentally, they do not scale. A junior associate may handle very few practice depositions before being put in front of a real witness, where the stakes are high and the client’s patience is limited.
“DepoSim is the high-fidelity, high-stakes flight simulator that turns a knowledgeable attorney into a truly competent and practiced advocate,” said Abdi Shayesteh, founder and CEO of AltaClaro. “It fills a crucial gap that traditional, costly, and infrequent deposition training models simply cannot address.”
AltaClaro frames DepoSim within its broader philosophy of Deliberate Practice – the principle, borrowed from sports and performing arts, that skills are built through repeated, feedback-intensive repetition rather than passive observation or one-time exposure.
The idea is that a lawyer should be able to run a deposition as many times as needed, adjusting variables each time, until the fundamental skills are internalized.
How It Works
In a demonstration of the platform, the fictional case at the center of the simulation involved a franchise dispute, Rowan v. Heartbeat Inc., in which a husband-and-wife pair of franchisees of a greeting card company sued for breach of contract and failure to provide promised support. The person running the demo played the role of defense counsel for Heartbeat, deposing plaintiff Nick Rowan.
Before launching the simulation, the user configures several parameters via a main dashboard. A deposition outline can be uploaded as a PDF, Word document or text file. The user selects a witness personality from five options: the Overtalker, the Honest Lay Person, the Hostile but Inarticulate Witness, the Polished Professional, and the Polite but Language-Inept Witness.
Opposing counsel can similarly be configured. Choices include the Silent Observer, the Nervous Over-Objector, the Polite Shield, the Aggressive Gatekeeper and the Master Technician. The demo used a Polished Professional witness and a Polite Shield opposing counsel who objects strategically but courteously.
Once launched, the simulation unfolds as a live spoken exchange. DepoSim uses text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and large language model capabilities to voice the witness, opposing counsel and court reporter in real time. The user speaks their questions aloud; the witness and opposing counsel respond dynamically.
During the demo, witness “Nick Rowan” answered questions about his educational background, prior business experience, pre-investment due diligence and his understanding of the franchise agreement he signed. At one point, opposing counsel objected to a compound question and to an argumentative question, much as one might expect a real attorney to do.
The interface also displays the uploaded deposition outline and any pre-marked exhibits on screen during the session, so the attorney can reference their materials while questioning the witness, mirroring real-world practice.
The Feedback Engine
When the simulation ends, DepoSim generates a structured evaluation tied to a standardized training rubric.
In the demo, the feedback began streaming in within minutes of the deposition concluding and covered a detailed breakdown across multiple skill categories, including the opening introduction, witness identity confirmation, oath administration, ground rules, educational and work background development, exhibit handling, questioning technique, follow-up skill, witness management, time management and articulacy.
For each category, the feedback identifies what went well, what needed improvement, and how to improve, along with specific transcript references, citing the point in the transcript where a particular issue arose.
The demo illustrator noted, for instance, that the compound question asked during the session was flagged, with the specific turn cited and an explanation of why it was problematic and what should have been done differently.
Scores are assigned at the category level, and the session concludes with a summary of key strengths and areas for development. Both the full transcript and the feedback report are downloadable as PDFs, which AltaClaro envisions attorneys sharing with supervising partners for additional coaching conversations.
The feedback rubric, according to AltaClaro, is not purely tied to whether the attorney followed their outline. It also evaluates responsiveness to the witness, picking up on things the witness said and following up appropriately, which reflects a more sophisticated view of deposition competency than simple script adherence.
The AltaClaro-Verbit Partnership
The two companies began their collaboration at Legalweek 2025 and formally launched a beta in fall 2025.
The division of labor follows each company’s core competency: AltaClaro designed the pedagogy, the learner experience and the realistic deposition scenarios; Verbit built the underlying technology, including high-speed secure transcription and the AI agent capabilities that power the simulated witness and counsel.
“With DepoSim, we’re bringing the same level of technological rigor and realism that law firms expect in the courtroom into litigation training itself,” said Yair Amsterdam, CEO of Verbit. “This is a glimpse of how AI can meaningfully elevate legal performance.”
Verbit is best known in the legal market for its transcription and verbal intelligence products, including Legal Capture and Legal Visor, which are used by courts, attorneys and law firms for depositions, hearings and other legal proceedings.
Early Adopter Feedback
The six beta firms represent a range of firm sizes and practice focuses, from Littler Mendelson’s employment law concentration to Brownstein Hyatt’s lobbying-and-litigation hybrid.
Wendy Butler Curtis, chief innovation officer at Orrick, which has been an AltaClaro client for six years, said in the announcement that this is “the AI-driven innovation our profession needs.”
User feedback cited in the press materials included a participating partner describing the experience as “frighteningly realistic” and saying the feedback was “better than I’ve received from attorneys.”
A senior associate noted the value of “practicing going off-book with not a real human while not wasting your client’s money.”
Roadmap and Availability
DepoSim is available now to existing AltaClaro clients and new firms. Based on pilot feedback, the companies say they are expanding the platform’s scenario library to cover commercial litigation, employment law, intellectual property, expert witness depositions, trial practice, oral arguments, client interviews and negotiation.
The demo showed that case files can include multiple witnesses – a plaintiff’s witness, a third-party witness, and an expert witness – allowing attorneys to practice a full range of deposition scenarios within a single matter.
This launch follows AltaClaro’s Benchmark360 product, which applies AI to provide feedback on written legal work product. The company says thatDepoSim is, in effect, its oral counterpart, applying the same data-driven feedback loop to spoken advocacy skills.
More information is available at www.altaclaro.com/deposim.