Format for group oath

[Lindsay Pinkham]

I'm doing a union-employer arbitration, and the arbitrator swore in all four grievants at once at the very beginning of the proceedings.  Ordinarily I would show, "JOHN SMITH, a grievant herein, called as a witness on his own behalf, was sworn and testified as follows:"  These four grievants were examined one by one throughout the course of the day.  Any ideas?  Should I just do it in colloquy form and show the arbitrator stating the oath and then the four grievants saying "I do" one by one?

[Mary Jo Cochran]

I don't think it's a good idea to leave a lot of blank line.  That's just something that got ingrained in me from being a high quality legal assistant.  My attorneys really balked at that.

[Quyen]

I agree re the formatting specifically, Mary Jo, not necessarily of the swear blurb, but I see a lot of transcripts that have "okay" or one-word question paragraphs. Although the "okay" or whatever is in response to the witness's answer before the attorney asks a new question, I think it makes it look like transcript padding.

[Quyen]

"JOHN SMITH, JANE DOE, MARY JANE, JAMES DEAN, grievants herein, called as witnesses on their own behalf, were sworn and testified as follows:"

[Lindsay Pinkham]

Thanks, Quyen, yours is pretty much like the one I went with.  It just seemed kind of strange to have the "as follows" when the examination of the first grievant didn't start till about 10 pages later, after they went through a bunch of housekeeping.  But I couldn't figure out any other way to phrase it, so I kept it like this.