RE-POST: NoteBook in Trial ...
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RE-POST: NoteBook in Trial Prep scenarioby elizabeth - 12:30PM, Nov 17, 2004 |
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Re-posting this message to this new forum from the Open Discussion forum. Apologies if you've already seen this.
Elizabeth --- I was so amazed by this usage scenario that I had to share it with the group (forwarded to us by the MacLaw Listserv). I am blown away by how creatively this trial lawyer is using NoteBook and the Mac in his trial work. It's like Perry Mason for the 21st century. I hope you find this inspiring. Elizabeth ------ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MacLaw/message/66605 I stumbled across a program in CompUSA the other day that I am very excited about and want to recommend to the group for consideration. It is called NoteBook from Circus Ponies Software. It cost a whole $49.95. You can download and try it for 30 days at www.circusponies.com It is an outliner/ notebook creator and here is how I am using it. I have created a Notebook for an upcoming trial I have. I set up divider pages for Pre-Trial, Voir Dire, Opening, Witnesses, Exhibits, Important Discovery, Damages and Closing Under the Witnesses tab I created a page for each witness. On that witnesses page is the outline of my direct or cross. BUT where the program is way cool is the fact that on my outline if I refer to an exhibit I drag the pdf file of that exhibit to the outline page and it creates a thumbnail of it in the outline - next to my note EXHIBIT NO. 7, etc. When I am going through the outline with the witness, I introduce the paper copy of Exhibit 7 and when it is admitted I click on the thumbnail which opens it in preview. I then then drag the preview pane off the left of my screen where I have the projector set up an extended desktop and Voila -- the jury sees the exhibit on the projection screen. No fumbling through notebooks, exhibit folders, etc. No trying to center the document on an elmo. This also works with video depo excerpts - just click on the thumbnail of the avi file in the outline, drag to the left and the jury sees the video. No fumbling with the vcr. Under the exhibit tab I have made a thumbnail of every exhibit in order so I don't have to find the correct witness page reference if I need to skip around with exhibits. On the discovery page - I inserted the pdf of the discovery responses so I don't have to look through a notebook if an issue comes up. On the closing page I will copy over the exhibits that I will refer to in closing so my paralegal can easily find them. My whole trial is now sitting on my laptop rather than having counsel table covered with notebooks and paper. In the past I have had numerous jurors tell me they thought my side had credibility because we were so organized (we had color coded binderteks for everything) while opposing counsel had papers scattered everywhere. I am really excited to try this case with my 12" powerbook connected to the projected and a legal pad on the table. (Of course I will still have the 23 color coded binderteks that make up this file in a rolling bookshelf behind me). Another feature: the notebook creates a keyword index of everything you enter into it to help in quickly locating anything. You can print out your entire finished notebook (If you want a backup for trial) and you can publish the entire notebook to the web or your mac account if you wanted to share it. Anyway, I am sooo impressed with this program it alone seems to justify our recent move to macs. We are buying an additional 5 licenses today so everyone can use it and contribute to notebooks stored on the server. I will let you know how the trial goes if we go. (We are number 2 on the docket). |
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I have used Circus Ponies in my last three major cases: two murders and a multi-million dollar health care fraud. All discovery, etc. gets scanned to PDFs and each item gets a brief abstract typed into CP (mainly to be able to search, since what's in the PDF is beyond the reach of the search function). Correspondence, motions, authority, deadlines, sentencing issues, videos, witnesses, subpoenas, memos... you name it, it all goes in, one way or the other. I set up my CP Notebook EXACTLY like my trial notebook so if I can find it in the program I can find it in the physical notebook. I have a trial notebook template that I start from, then customize depending on the case. The problems I have found are not surprising. Getting a lot of paper scanned, abstracted and organized into the thing takes a long time and a lot of support staff hours, but that's just the way it is. As we become more familiar with this whole process I hope it goes more smoothly. FEATURE REQUEST: When you've got a group project like trial preparation, it would be GREAT to be able to truly share a notebook over the network. This is so important for what I do. We have had situations where there are three different iterations of a single trial notebook floating around. ADDITIONAL FEATURE REQUEST: I would love to be able to import email. It is such a big part of correspondence now. (In federal court you don't even file actual paper anymore... its all electronic.) It would be great to be able to keep all the emails pertaining to a case in Circus Ponies. A lot of photographs tend to bog things down, so I'm still trying to figure out how to have them in the notebook in a usable format. Then, of course, it is important to have a backup computer. In my last trial -- the fed medicaid fraud that lasted six weeks -- my 12" G4 PowerBook lost a hard drive half-way through. This last trial was a real eye-opener. Computers in the courtroom are real. I used Keynote Presentations for opening and closing. Everything plugged right into the courtroom's AV system and displayed on a huge projection system in front of the jury, and flat screens at counsel tables, the bench, witness box and even the gallery. Of course, that's the feds; the old courthouse on the square isn't going to have all the fancy equipment, but that's where a good Dell projector comes in handy :-) Heck, I find myself enjoying creating the presentation at least as much as the traditional legal stuff, and the look on the prosecutor's face when you roll out a really nice Keynote presentation... but I'm getting off topic here in my enthusiasm! Even so, I was usually too busy to use CP much in trial, since it was more efficient to make whispered request to my paralegal to hand me stuff on the fly. Where I DO use it a lot is in preparing for trial, because everything is searchable and organized and right here on my laptop (as opposed to six banker's boxes). I would be happy to discuss real-world legal applications for this program. Tim Capps Carbondale, IL
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These are all great ideas. I just discovered the program this weekend. Until now I used the "notebook layout" in Microsoft Word. This program is much better. I have created a "litigation notebook" for each of my cases and a separate notebook/list for my "to do's." (I wish there was a way to make a separate to do list in each notebook and have a master to do list automatically update as something is added or completed in the other to do lists). In each litigation notebook I have a section for notes (subsections for conference calls, ideas, review of record), witnesses (subsections for each witness, which contains thoughts, questions/outline, CV, depos, clips, articles, etc. that are specific to that witness), important pleadings (operative complaint, answer, reply, motions for SJ or to dismiss, etc.), important discovery (rogs, RFP, RFA, etc.), research (ideas, subsections for each topic and cases from Westlaw clipped into each subsection), exhibits (pdf's of the exhibits I think are most important), contact list (contacts for all witnesses, counsel, court, client, etc.), and trial motions/instructions/verdict form. This is still a work in progress and I expect it will change over time. My #1 request to Notebook would be to make the MS word documents and certain PDF's searchable. I know some PDFs are not searchable, but several are and it would be great if Notebook added those terms to its index. I liked the idea of adding a blank shell/caption for pleadings, I also liked the idea of adding voir dire questions, and I hadn't even thought of adding a correspondence tab, which I will now do.
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Saluki
Member
07:41AM, Jul 22, 2005