Technology

How To Replace All The Binders In Your Law Office - A Pictorial Walk Through

This is how you can replace trial binders with digital trial binders that hold more information and organize it better.

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A few months ago, one of my favorite programs went completely free. I’ve been using OneNote since about 2003 when it came out. It has completely replaced my note-taking system. I have not taken a note on a yellow legal pad in years. I’ve talked to a lot of people, and not very many really understand OneNote or have ever heard of it. So, here’s how I use it in my legal practice. I’m going to show you how to replace trial binders with digital trial binders that hold more information and organize it better.

As far as a note-taking system, it’s far superior to paper. I was using OneNote in law school. I went to school in the evening, worked full-time in a big law firm during the day, and had two small kids, so I wasn’t always as energetic as some of my classmates. Every lecture, I turned on OneNote, plugged in my USB microphone, and set OneNote to record the lectures. My notes then synced up with the lecture. So, later, I could go back and click on a note and it would play back the portion of audio that was being recorded as I wrote that note. Needless to say, I had a lot of notes that said, “Everyone is writing something down – rewind 10 seconds and see what the professor just said.” You can do the same thing in deposition (check your state rules on audio recording depos). Audio record a depo and make notes — “Just admitted liability” or “Check this at break vs. actual documents and follow up.” There is also a feature to add a timestamp to your notes. So, if someone says something important, I can timestamp it in my notes and go back to that part in the video later back at the office to make a clip out of that part.

It’s an even more powerful tool if you have a device with an active stylus, such as a Surface Pro, a Windows 8 tablet, or a Samsung Note phone. It makes it easier to take notes. A lot of the styluses are set up so that the back end of them works as an eraser in OneNote. If you have a Surface Pro 3, you’ll notice that the back of the stylus has a purple button. That button opens OneNote and adds a blank page to start taking notes.

I use it for trial binders and to organize my cases as I work them up. I have all of my information with me at my fingertips all the time. OneNote syncs up with iPads, iPhones, Android phones, and home computers if you have your workbooks set to sync. You can also collaborate with others by sharing workbooks, so everyone has access to team meeting notes or the group to do list. As I mentioned before, if I am in a deposition with someone else from my team and we both have a shared OneNote workbook open and are connected to the internet, I can take a note and it will appear seconds later on the other person’s screen. So, it’s a great way to pass notes during a depo as well.

Here are some examples of how to set up OneNote for a trial binder, but you can really use it to replace any notes or binder system in your office for any stage of litigation once you get down the basics.

The Basics

OneNote is set up as a digital binder. So, here’s the interface:

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I’ve created a fictional case here. Where it says “Smith Case” in the upper left, that’s called a Workbook. If I click that drop down arrow, I can see other workbooks that I have saved. The tabs across the top where it says “Record Review, Depo Prep, Trial Prep, Team Meetings, and Notes” — those are sections. Think of those like tabs in a notebook. Then, on the far right, I have my pages within each tab.

Pasting Documents into OneNote for Review

OneNote has a variety of annotation tools that you can use to highlight or annotate your documents. If you drag and drop a file into a page, you get the option to either insert the file as a link or insert the file as a printout. If you insert it as a printout, as I did in the screenshot above, you can use the pen tools to draw all over your document. It also creates a link for me to open the original source document to see a clean copy:

You can take your notes in the margin or directly on top of the document. So, no more large stacks of documents with yellow post-its sticking out to the side.

Depo Prep

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Here, I have a sample depo outline. One column for my questions, one for the exhibits I plan on using, and one for whether that document gets marked as a depo exhibit and which number it is. I can drag and drop my documents into the table and then open them and have quick access to all of my exhibits in a non-cluttered way.

Trial Prep

You can do the same thing with witness examination outlines in trial. I can drag specific pages from a deposition or from an exhibit into my outline to have impeachment evidence ready without having a huge stack of papers that I need to shuffle through to make my point. It helps with flow and timing if you don’t have to adjust your pace to find that one page that proves the witness is lying.

Meeting Notes

Not only can you take notes, but you can annotate and tag your notes. For example, here, I’ve taken some notes and an item for me has a tight deadline, so I click and drag over the note and right click and I get an option to add that note to my Outlook task list with a pop up reminder.

Note also that I handwrote the title of the note here as “10/14/2014,” and it recognized my handwriting and put that as the name of the page on the right.

I can also add various tags to notes or documents. Up at the top, where it says “To Do” or “Important” is a list of tags. I can add an “important” tag to a note or in the margin of a document and then use the button to find all tags and filter search results to only show me important items or only show me to do list items:

Export to OneNote

One you install OneNote, you’ll get a menu option when you right click on things to send them to OneNote. Outlook has a built-in button at the top to send an email to OneNote. When you click that, you have the option to choose where you want to send it:

Exporting From OneNote

Once a case is over, you can archive your notebook as a PDF. I used this feature a few years ago when I got an email from an appellate attorney who was doing the appeal on a murder case I worked on. I was actually in another trial and she asked me if I still had any notes from trial. She got the trial transcript, but it was a 9-week trial and the transcript was several thousand pages. On a break, I opened up my workbook for that case, exported it as a PDF, and emailed her my daily notes from the examination of 60+ witnesses from a case I had worked on a year earlier.

OneNote is completely free. If you don’t already have it as part of your Office suite, get it at OneNote.com.

Jeff Bennion is Of Counsel at Estey & Bomberger LLP, a plaintiffs’ law firm specializing in mass torts and catastrophic injuries. Although he serves on the Executive Committee for the State Bar of California’s Law Practice Management and Technology section, the thoughts and opinions in this column are his own and are not made on behalf of the State Bar of California. Follow him on Twitter here or on Facebook here, or contact him by e-mail at jeff@trial.technology.

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