Analyzing Deposition Transcripts Using Software Tools

Litigators think of LiveNote™ as a way to capture electronic transcripts from court reporters or deposition reporting in real time.  Truly advanced practitioners may even know about slapping the Space Bar to Quick Mark noteworthy exchanges on the fly.

But there is a lot more to LiveNote — and its successor, West LiveNote, which includes features from RealLegal Binder in its Outlook-style interface — than that.  You can search, issue code, annotate, and digest within and across transcripts; in West LiveNote, you can search, annotate and report across exhibit documents as well.

LiveNote allows you to set up a color-coded Issues Bar.

By selecting one or more issues, you can click in the margin to mark text for those issues; you can also select text directly within the transcript, and add a searchable comment to the issues.  LiveNote also allows you to define certain words to be Auto Tags – they are automatically highlighted throughout your transcripts (and exhibit documents, in West LiveNote):

Anything you can search, Auto Tag, Issue code or otherwise annotate or select can be pulled into a report, selecting all or a filtered subset of transcripts, documents and annotation types.  The result can be printed or exported to PowerPoint, Word (or Rich-Text Format), Video, Sanction, Trial Director or CaseMap.  It may also be saved as a Web page (HTML), XML file, or ASCII text file, or a comma separated value (CSV) file.

NEXT TIME:  CT Summation iBlaze®.

By:  Andy Kass, Director Technical Services, Concordance Certified Software Trainer, LiveNote Certified Trainer

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Electronic transcripts that can be captured from real-time court reporters are an accepted part of practice today.  There is no need to wait for court transcription services to send over paper copies; all you need is the file on your computer, which you can examine at any time even before the final, signed version is approved and distributed.

Aside from being able to read testimony on a 5-pound laptop rather than a five-ounce stack of paper, what are the benefits of electronic transcripts as you prepare for trial?  How would you like to be able to keyword search, issue code, and digest all of your electronic testimony?  You may already have the tools.  Here are some examples of commonly-used software that helps with transcript review:

• CT Summation iBlaze®
• LexisNexis Concordance®
• LexisNexis CaseMap® and TextMap®
• West LiveNote™

In the next few blog entries, I’ll discuss how you can get more from your electronic transcripts with these tools.  In fact, we reviewed Searching Transcripts in Concordance in our previous blog entry.  Concordance® can import transcripts in ASCII Text, LiveNote™ Portable Transcript Format (PTF) or LiveNote™ Portable Case Format (PCF).  The transcript page and line formatting will be maintained in each import; PTF format brings in a transcript and its LiveNote™ annotations (QuickMarks, Issue Codes, Notes), while PCF format brings in a whole case package.  I’ll note here that Concordance® cannot handle video directly; you can hot-link a video file as an attachment when creating a note, and view it using Windows Media Player or any other utility capable of handling MPEG or AVI files.

NEXT TIME:  West LiveNote

by Andy Kass
Director, Technical Services
Concordance Certified Software Trainer, LiveNote Certified Trainer

www.uslegalsupport.com

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Digital Management of Testimony in Court Reporter Transcripts

Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (E-SIGN) was enacted June 30, 2000 to facilitate the use of electronic documents and signatures.  As it relates to the law, see Digital Signature Guidelines Tutorial prepared by the American Bar Association abanet.org/scitech/ec/isc/dsg-tutorial.html.              

When applied to a court reporter transcript by way of encryption and authentication, a digital signature secures the deposition transcript and prevents it from being readily changed.  For example, U.S. Legal Support www.uslegalsupport.com delivers its deposition transcripts digitally signed and encrypted. The deposition transcripts are then uploaded to a secure repository so that each client has access to all testimony in all cases in which U.S. Legal Support’s certified shorthand reporters have performed the deposition reporting. This ensures the user of the repository can verify the integrity of every transcript upon viewing it.

While most court reporting companies have centralized production of deposition transcripts, U.S. Legal Support maintains production within the state in which its brick-and-mortar offices are located. In so doing, it ensures statutory compliance with the taking and production of deposition transcripts and allows us to deliver a higher degree of service.

Reesa Parker is from Dallas, Texas. She is a compliance officer for U.S. Legal Support in Texas. She served the National Court Reporters Association as President in 2006-2007 and for many years on NCRA’s Technology Evaluation Committee. Parker is a Certified Realtime Court Reporter and is a Fellow of the Academy of Court Reporting. 

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Given today’s volume of electronic discovery, review software such as LexisNexis Concordance^® is the only way to filter down to relevant material.  Concordance^® applies the same searching, tagging and annotation tools to electronic court reporting transcripts, allowing them to be searched, issue coded and digested along with the underlying documents.    

In an antitrust case involving browsers, for example, we may want to search the deposition transcripts for browser. 

This windows the set to four transcripts; note that hits are highlighted in red (jump to hits using NextHit / PreviousHit in the BROWSE Toolbar), and LiveNote™ QuickMarks are in the margin. 

To narrow the search to a significant date, add 1995 to the prior search.  Instead of retyping, open REVIEW and reference your prior search by number, then add the subset term:  1 and 1995. 

To be able to pull these relevant transcripts quickly, you may want to Tag them.  Open the Tags Task Pane, and create the tag Relevant – Browser by right-clicking and selecting New – Tag.  After entering the tag name, right-click again to select Tag all documents in query.  

To look for a phrase, such as Sun’s Java Security Council, open the Search Task Pane and type or copy that phrase into the box headed with the exact phrase, and hit the Search button. 

This also automatically maps around any stopwords in the phrase.  Note the yellow highlighted and underscored text above our hit.  That is a Note; Concordance^® can jump right to a note.

To create a Note, select a block of significant text and right-click to select New Note.  Notice the Issues list is an exact replica of the document-level Tags; these identify a relevant piece of text.  Select or create an Issue tag and type a comment; the Attachment tab allows you to browse out to hot-link a document or URL. 

By:  Andy Kass – Director, Technical Services - Concordance and LiveNote Certified Software Trainer

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