Brandon Osterbind is a Personal Injury and Civil Litigation lawyer from Central Virginia. His firm is a family firm, and his personal injury caseload at one time is about 75 cases, all with several depositions each.
To manage that volume, and keep organized, Brandon uses TranscriptPad for every deposition transcript. Brandon says that using TranscriptPad is “1,000 times easier than reading it with paper and doing summaries.” Creating custom issue codes, and exporting PDF summaries couldn’t be easier. To easily keep all testimony he may wish to read in at trial, he simply adds a “Trial Testimony” issue code, marks the portions and can print or bring it up on the iPad at trial to read to the jury. There is no more cutting and pasting, or carrying around several pounds of paper transcripts.
“Using TranscriptPad is 1,000 times easier than reading it with paper and doing summaries”
Brandon tells us that any time he’s presenting, he’s using TrialPad. He uses TrialPad in depositions by wirelessly hooking up to TV in the deposition conference room via Apple TV. There he can pull up all exhibits and photos on the TV, allow a witness to annotate it, then quickly add an exhibit sticker and email or print to wireless printer.
In the courtroom his preference is also TrialPad. He states that “The problem with a computer is that everyone sees you fumbling - no matter how good you are, or think you are. With TrialPad you don’t. TrialPad lets you play videos, callout and highlight portions of documents, and everything is very smooth and easy.”
“The problem with a computer is that everyone sees you fumbling - no matter how good you are, or think you are.”
Pro tips from Brandon:
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Court reporters like to send PDFs - make sure you request a TXT transcript.
- Using the iPad Pro with Apple Pencil is awesome. A whole different experience.
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Know how to use the Blank button when presenting in the courtroom. It takes everything off the screen without leaving presentation mode, and can be used to remove a distracting item during examination, or to give you time to find a different document before pressing Present again.
- Practice!
Brandon’s firm, Osterbind Law, can be found at www.osterbindlaw.com. He also authors a blog, On Demand Law Office, and has featured TrialPad and TranscriptPad in a post called “The Top Five iPad Apps Every Lawyer Should Have”.