In a live webinar co-presented with ILTA, Stephanie Clerkin (Director of Litigation Support at Korein Tillery) and David Gerkin (Paralegal Manager at Baker Botts) discussed best practices in deposition transcript management.
Deposition transcripts are not just key pieces of evidence, they are actual testimony used in trial. Thus, having software that eases many of the pain points around transcript management helps the team quickly build a strong case. The panelists explored:
- Planning for technology needs at the outset including communication with the court reporting company
- Project management work that sets up the team for success including organizing up your workspace
- How technology makes designation exchanges faster and easier
- Strategies for user adoption within the organization
David described setting up a new workspace "[I]t's much like handling a document review, you want to poll your attorneys, you want to talk to your case team to identify what are the issues we're looking for, what are the really critical elements of the case. That way we can use the database to create our issue tags, to build that into the system. So that once we start loading data in . . . we can highlight, we can annotate, and start analyzing the case."
Stephanie described a case with over 100 depositions, over 500 GB of video files, and over 2,000 exhibits, "There is not enough time in the day to go through that manually and do what we would need to do for the deposition designation process we were getting ready to embark on, especially when you have a limited amount of time . . . it was going to be physically impossible." With technology, she was able to load everything within two weeks then use tools to search, highlight, apply designations in bulk to multiple transcripts, as well as include co-counsel within the workspace. She said, "It saved me alone probably 200+ hours of my own time and I don't know how to quantify how much attorney time it saved."
The webinar concluded with information about how to evaluate different technologies when you are ready to modernize your system.
Watch: Best practices in deposition transcript management
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