“I don't really carry hard copy files anymore. Everything's on my iPad. I've got it all set up, ready to go, for whatever part of the case I've got to handle."
Personal injury trial attorney Richard Dellinger tries cases nearly every week with Morgan & Morgan — running his own trial presentation with the LIT SUITE, wireless and paperless, no matter how packed his docket gets.
Richard Dellinger is a Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer with an AV Preeminent rating from Martindale-Hubbell and a coveted invitation into the American Board of Trial Advocates. He spent 22 years handling complex litigation in insurance, intellectual property, and finance law before shifting his focus to personal injury, serving as Lead Trial Counsel at one of Florida's largest PI firms and securing millions of dollars in recoveries for clients.
His record isn't built from the sidelines. For Richard Dellinger, being in trial isn't the exception — it's the rhythm of the job. He's tried eight cases in the first half of 2026 alone, bringing in verdicts and settlements north of $6 million in Bartow, Pensacola, Jacksonville, and Orlando.
Before Morgan & Morgan, Richard spent five years at a high-volume personal injury practice where, as he puts it, "all I did was trials”. That meant one or two a month, week after week. That pace is what pushed him to get hands-on with running his own trial presentation, rather than leaving that step to someone else. It led him to TrialPad and the rest of the LIT SUITE, which have been the backbone of his practice ever since.
Long before a witness takes the stand, Richard has already loaded every exhibit into TrialPad, highlighted the relevant passages, and bookmarked the pages he'll need. That prep work pays off in the moments that matter most: catching a defense witness or opposing counsel misstating the record.
"I go in and bookmark everything, so I can pop right to that document and find what's happening on that date. I know it better than the witnesses do. Defense lawyers will mislead the jury about what a document says, and I go in and pull it up in real time — on rebuttal, on redirect, whatever it takes. It's powerful when I can fix that in front of the jury.”
He sets the expectation early, in jury selection, that his presentation will be entirely digital. No passing exhibits down the jury box. Everything goes up on the screen, for everyone to see at once.
Richard still works with a trial support team on the ground for everything else that keeps a trial running, from logistics and staging to the dozen other things a courtroom needs. But when it's time to actually put a document in front of the jury, he prefers to be the one holding the iPad. Knowing every highlight and bookmark himself means there's no hand-off and no delay between deciding what the jury needs to see and it appearing on the screen.
"I prefer having control over the document. I prefer having it highlighted in advance so I know exactly where I'm going to go. I may have a 300-page document with the relevant paragraph highlighted and indexed, so I know exactly where I need to be while the witness is on the stand.”
Richard's workflow is built for an attorney who doesn't stay in one courtroom for long. Case files come in through OneDrive, get organized into folders inside TrialPad by phase of trial (e.g. direct exam, cross, opening, closing), and from there he can jump to exactly what he needs without digging through paper. On the ground, his trial support team handles everything else that keeps a courtroom running smoothly. Richard asks them to bring an Apple TV, so he can drive the presentation himself, straight from his own iPad. He also relies on the Apple Pencil markup tool to hand-annotate exhibits and whiteboards live, in front of the jury, and imports his verdict form straight from Word into TrialPad and fills it out by hand on the spot.
"All the time — 100% wireless. No papers, no wires. I've got to be able to carry just this iPad, and I can prep wherever I'm at, wherever I'm sitting. It's all here.”
He carries that same continuity across an entire trial. When co-counsel built an opening PowerPoint, Richard loaded it as a PDF into TrialPad and showed individual slides during witness testimony and closing, reminding the jury of what was promised in opening, and showing them it was being delivered.
Richard's second essential tool in the LIT SUITE is TranscriptPad, which he uses to organize and search every deposition transcript in a case, tagging sections by likely cross-examination topic as he reads. That prep turns into speed at trial.
"TranscriptPad is helpful because it lets you take every deposition transcript to trial with you, without carrying notebooks and folders, and search all of them in real time. If a subject comes up at trial, a neck injury, property damage, whatever they say they can't do anymore, I can search that subject across every deposition in the case and see every time it came up. That's the best way to use it: finding topics as they come up in trial and seeing everything every witness has said about it.”
Richard also builds his video deposition designations, counter-designations, and objection reports in TranscriptPad. Earlier in his career, finalizing a video clip after a judge ruled on an objection meant routing the edit through someone else and waiting on the turnaround. Now, with TranscriptPad, Richard can trim and finalize the clip himself the moment a ruling comes down, on his own schedule, without having to coordinate the cut with anyone else.
He even uses TranscriptPad to keep working during his commute, playing synced deposition audio over CarPlay on the way to trials in other cities.
"If I hear something interesting, I tap once, and it marks the line. When I get back, I've got ten or twenty question-and-answer sets I can quickly issue-code.”
Asked what he'd tell another trial lawyer weighing whether to run their own trial presentation, Richard didn't hesitate:
"Load all your documents and exhibits, already Bates-stamped, so everyone in the courtroom is speaking the same language. Highlight those documents and bookmark them so you can find the relevant one quickly while the witness is on the stand. Learn Key Docs, too, so you can create folders for each portion of the trial — opening, a witness, closing — and jump to that folder very quickly.”
His advice on getting comfortable with the tools before trial day:
"Use it in depositions before you go to trial — that's the best way to get comfortable with the software. You can also practice at home or in the office. Screen share to pretty much any TV, or plug in an Apple TV if the TV doesn't have screen share. The more you use it, the better you get.”
For Richard, the payoff is what this technology frees him up to do. He has no boxes to haul between courthouses. He can carry an entire case on one iPad, jump from courtroom to courtroom, and know that every exhibit and every video clip is exactly where he left it, and ready the moment he needs it.
For a trial lawyer who tries cases the way most attorneys wish they could, that's the real edge: knowing the record so well that there's no lag between what he wants the jury to see and what appears on the screen. Richard's practice is proof that even with a full trial support team behind him, being the one who runs the presentation — and knows it cold — is what keeps him ready for whatever trial comes next.
Learn more about Richard Dellinger, Esq.:
Firm website: https://www.forthepeople.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-christie-258b2a5/
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