Update: it’s gonna be $200/hour for the time required by the deposition plus two hours of preparation time. (They agreed to that awfully quickly, too.)
Totally not on topic, really, but: don’t you hate it when they agree that easily? Then you think… Damn! I probably could have asked for twice as much!
That’s not the cheapest fee for a medical witness I’ve ever seen, but let’s just say you’re flying coach, not first class. 
Then again, as a mere resident, you don’t rate what a senior attending with a national rep and a bazillion published papers could extract. 
Don’t be surprised at how nitpicky some of the questions are. Lawyers are trained to parse out the teensiest details of a case.
Expect to be asked what appears to be the same question multiple times. Listen carefully! There may well be small variations in phrasing that could alter the correct answer from what you’ve produced the first few times. This isn’t necessarily the lawyer being tricky (though it can be). It ties back to my first point.
General rule for medical depos: You’ll be impressed with how well some lawyers understand the medical topics you’ll be discussing. You’ll be appalled at the seemingly impenetrable ignorance of other questioners. Most examiners will fall somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.
Don’t go out of your way to educate the uncomprehending ones, beyond the bare bones of what you need to impart in order to answer the question. You are, however, free to answer that you don’t understand the question and ask that it be rephrased if it makes no medical sense to you. And you can go on asking for rephrasing until it makes enough sense for you to answer it. Don’t volunteer what you’re having problems with in the question, it’s the job of the lawyer to formulate a question capable of being answered, and to ask what the problem is if s/he chooses to.
Lawyer: “Doctor, could you give us your impression of the defendant?”
Doctor: “No, I’m sorry, I don’t do impressions. My training is as a Psychiatrist.”
Airplane: The Sequel
I’ve done a little expert testimony myself and have had classes in being an expert witness some years ago. As has been stated earlier, listen very closely to what is actually asked (like the time example). I was always told… and have made good use of… the “Could you please rephrase the question?” This is for those old chestnuts like “Do you still beat your wife…Yes or No?” You cannot accurately answer the question as phrased and you are free to have it rephrased, more than once if they are being difficult.
Keep in mind that your training in medicine is such that you strive to state things in exacting ways and you expect others to mean what they say as it would be taken by any reasonable person. Not so in courtrooms. It is more likely to have seemed like a thought is implied when it is being deliberatly misleading.
Having read your posts for awhile now, I know you to be keen of thought and sharp enough to see through these deceptions once in the right frame of mind. Most peoples biggest failing in testimony is our natural tendency to be helpful. This translates into volunteering information that was not asked for and sidetracking the discussion or confusing the lay-person.
In the case of a hostile testimony-
“Can you tell us your name?”
“Yes”
“Would you please?”
“Which one?”
It can be fun… like verbal chess. I suspect you’ll enjoy it in retrospect.
Update: it was today. It went well. It gives you a brand new appreciation for medical record keeping; they say to write your notes like a lawyer is going to go through them with you, but you don’t get it until you’re being asked on the record what the difference is between “the patient looks well” and “the patient looks very well”.
“Verbal chess” is a good way to describe it. The defendant’s lawyer–the kind that only a large soulless corporation can afford–was especially brilliant in this regard. He was like the chess opponent against whom you find yourself walking into a trap he set up fifteen moves ago, and you’re happy to do it because you’re so impressed by it.
I was usually able to see what they wanted from me. Sometimes I gave it to them, since it happened to be the truth; other times it wasn’t, so I did it. Most of the questions were easy to answer yes or no; the only time it was really tough was when they were trying to get a simple “yes” or “no” on a question that didn’t have one. I handled those OK.
I did bobble one small item; they asked me if two certain drugs belonged to a particular class (drugs I use all the time, I should add) and I said that I didn’t think they did–I thought they were another class. (There are two closely related classes of drugs in which the trade names all start with “A”, and I will never in my life learn which is which.) I salvaged it by telling him I was bad with trade names, and he gave me the generic names, so I could correct myself. Very small deal, but still embarrassing.
All in all, it was great–an excellent learning experience, and I can certainly use the money at the moment. (They thought it was magic when the depo ran 2.5 hours, and I gave them a neatly word-processed invoice for my prep time plus exactly 2.5 hours. I didn’t tell them that I printed up several with different times. 
)
That should be “other times it wasn’t, so I didn’t.”
I was wondering how it went! Glad to hear you came out well, and if you only fumbled once, that’s great. Lots of times the stress of the deposition is such that people forget things – I had one guy forget his wife’s name! Fortunately, she wasn’t in the room at the time, so I don’t think it jeopardized his marriage.
I aspire to be like the lawyer you described – “the kind that only a large soulless corporation can afford.” Ah, well. Congrats on surviving and making some money at it!
Excellent! Sounds like you could have yourself a tidy little sideline in med-mal expert witnessing if you choose to, given how you handled it and how you feel about the experience.
Although before you get into that, you ought to go through a deposition with a mumble-mouthed lawyer who doesn’t understand what s/he’s questioning on and gets in snarling fights with the other attorneys when s/he’s not trying to twist your answers and disembowel you. Just so you’ll be prepared for the really crappy times.