The Best Way To Organize Your Depo Transcripts Is With Free Software

What would happen if Dropbox and TrialDirector, two great programs, had a baby? That baby would be awesome.

Dropbox is one of my favorite programs. It certainly changed the way we share files and collaborate on cases. Another one of my favorite programs is TrialDirector, the best program for presenting evidence in trial. It’s got great tools for organizing and annotating evidence. Both programs have their pluses and minuses in terms of price and features.

When those two programs have a baby, that baby is awesome. The baby’s name is TDNotebook.

What Is TDNotebook?

TDNotebook is a cloud-based evidence management tool for collaboration between your office, co-counsel, vendors, and experts. It’s free like how Dropbox is free – you get a certain amount of free storage, and for anything above that, you have to pay.

Bringing the Joy of E-Discovery to Your Depo Transcripts

You can put videos, pdfs, and images into your database, but that can eat into your storage pretty quick. I use it mostly to organize depo transcripts. You can hold a lot of text files without even putting a dent in your storage. Since you can also store pdfs, you can keep all of your exhibits with your transcripts.

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If you are lucky enough to know what doc review is, you know that the basic concept is to tag documents with certain categories to filter them later. Usually, the tags apply to whole documents. That’s not really helpful with deposition transcripts though because if you take one 30(b)(6) depo, it could cover half of the categories, and tagging the whole document with those categories doesn’t do much to help you find what you need later. But in TDNotebook, you tag questions and answers from the transcript and run reports to show all the excerpts in your case for each issue. Here are some ideas of what you can do:

  • Expert Level Bill Gates: You can create custom tags to match the tags in your e-discovery database, or just whatever the elements are in your case, such as “Causation” or “knowledge of defect.”
  • Expert Level Thomas Edison: I don’t just limit my tags to issues in my case. I use tags like “for use in motion to compel” or “use in opening” or “demeanor on video not reflected in transcript” or “impeachment” or “follow up with written discovery.”
  • Expert level Nikola Tesla: If you have previous depo transcripts of an expert where he or she gave contradictory opinions, you can create tags for each opinion category such as “standard of care/requirement of obtaining informed consent prior to surgery” or “opinion re deviation from building code within industry custom and practice.”

You can also make notes, or tag things for follow up, or note depo corrections. This has almost entirely replaced my depo summaries.

Setting Permissions For Users

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TDNotebook is more than just a repository for evidence. You can create users for non-law-office members of your team. There is a Vendor user category that gives a vendor upload rights, but not view rights to your database. That way, your court reporters can just log in and upload transcripts and exhibits directly to your database as they are completed. Experts can get a view where they can log in and view documents, but not your annotations, issue codes, or notes. That keeps your work product out of their file and out of opposing counsel’s scope of discovery.

Use at Trial

If you want to put your whole case in there you can, space/money permitting. When you organize your exhibits into your Opening, Closing, and witness folders, and maybe make some deposition clips to show in trial, you just export your case to TrialDirector.

Conclusion

When I am consulting with other lawyers on using technology, one of the biggest hurdles is always cost. Sometimes, the attorney doesn’t see the immediate benefit of spending $250 on a high-speed desktop scanner that will save hours of non-billable time looking for paper copies of lost documents. That’s why this program is great. It’s got so many features built into it that you can use indefinitely for free. So it’s worth looking into — unless, of course, you work insurance defense and you like billing for doing things the long way.

Ed. note: This column has been brought to you by our friends at MyCase, web-based practice management software for lawyers. Please note, however, that the views expressed in the column are those of the writer alone.


Jeff Bennion is a solo practitioner from San Diego. When not handling his own cases, he’s consulting lawyers on how to use technology to not be boring in trial or managing e-discovery projects in mass torts/complex litigation cases. If you want to be disappointed in a lack of posts, you can follow him on twitter or on Facebook. If you have any ideas of things you want him to cover, email Jeff at jeff@trial.technology.

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