This comment reminded me of a post that appeared on HN few months ago, which may shed some light on why the questioning is structured the way it is:

"Effective Deposition Strategy and Dealing with the Evasive, Non-cooperative Witness"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29123830

This section, and the example that follow it, are particularly relevant:

> Second, don’t go immediately for the killer question. Take the time to build toward your ultimate question with multiple questions, each question about one fact.

> Questions that include one and only one fact is the technique that gives you the most control of a witness.[4] You must ask about facts, not conclusions, when you want to control an evasive, non-cooperative witness. The witness will never agree to your conclusions, and their disagreement with you on any point may seem completely reasonable unless there has been the proper “set-up” (see the following questions and the next section dealing with “set-up”). The advantage of the “one fact – one question” technique is that when a witness “runs”, i.e. they try a long non-responsive narrative; the question can be repeated easily again and again. Each “run” makes the witness appear less credible and frequently results in the witness admitting the fact imbedded in the question. Stringing together multiple questions that are “one fact-one question” allows the jury to derive larger, case-critical conclusions that are inescapable, even if unstated.

I think they do it in pieces to get them to start saying yes to stuff, both to get them on a roll and to have a place to pick back up that's not the very beginning if they say no to something along the way.

> that's not the very beginning

So you binary search the damn thing, and you find the logical culprit in log(N) time if N is the number of clauses, instead of searching linearly.

Like, if they agree what a phone is, you don't need to drill down all the details of what constitutes a phone.

If they disagree, only then traverse the sub-nodes of that.

I have also heard that depending on the situation, an attorney may want to bore the jury. If you overload them with information you can reduce the effectiveness of facts that may be detrimental to your case.

I don’t think it’s because they love wasting time or billing unnecessary hours. I think it’s because they are professional lawyers who know way, way more about questioning witnesses than you do.