CALLOUTS AND SPLIT SCREEN

As mentioned in our review of Exhibit A, any app which attempts to call itself a trial presentation app has to do callouts. These are the zoom in boxes attorneys use to ‘callout’ certain areas of an exhibit, say paragraph 3 of a document, so that the jury can focus on a particular part of the exhibit. While Exhibit A was the first to offer this ability but did so with some bugs, TrialPad has executed this feature flawlessly. Callouts are as simple as selecting the callout tool from the toolbox menu at the top of the screen and using your finger to select the area to zoom in on. What sets TrialPad apart from Exhibit A is the ability to not only do multiple callouts on one document, but to do have two documents on the screen (split screen) and do callouts from each of the exhibits simultaneously. Each callout can be moved around to difference positions on the screen by dragging with your finger.

As you can see, this sort of thing is imperative if you want to compare and contrast two versions of a document, say a contract, and bring the difference between them to the jury’s attention. In the example above you will notice that the annotations made to the underlying exhibit are shown in the callout as well (this has been lacking in some other apps which do callouts).

One suggestion I have however is that because TrialPad automatically sizes the callouts to the width of the screen, it can be a bit confusing when you have two callouts from separate exhibits to know which document each came from originally (since they are both the same size). One solution might be to have the callouts downsized a bit and shifted either to the right or left depending on from which exhibit it was called out.

Bottom line is that this feature was executed perfectly with TrialPad 2.0.

VIDEO CLIPS

While I knew the ability to play video on TrialPad 2.0 was going to be available, what I didn’t know was that we would be able to make video clips using TrialPad 2.0. Calling up a video is simple as they are accessible in the left hand pane under the “Video” tab. Once a video is selected it is loaded into the presentation area and ready to play. I have so far loaded a 4 GB deposition into TrialPad 2.0 and it literally was brought up instantly and ready to play. Play controls come up over the video just like they would when watching any video on your iPad, along with the ability to ‘push’ the video out to an AppleTV.

What is a surprise however is that below the video are two new icons. One to take a snapshot of the video from wherever the playhead is and the other to create a clip of the video. This is nice if you want to create a snapshot of a part of a video or want to create a clip on the fly of a portion of a deposition. When you press the clip button a “filmstrip” of the video opens up with the standard yellow brackets used by iMovie and the built-in video function of the iPAd, allowing you to trim your video to only play a certain portion of the video. The only problem is that the size of the editing window is a bit too small and it takes a couple of tries sometimes to get the clip to “trim” to exactly where you want it. Once you’re done trimming the video though, the resultant clip is saved in your list of Videos as a clip and you can use the edit button to rename the clip to anything you want. This is a killer feature and to be honest, one I hadn’t thought of putting into a trial presentation app on the iPad for fear the hardware could not handle it (forgetting that the iPad already lets you trim videos in the Video app and iMovie already).

WHITEBOARD

The other nice addition to TrialPad 2.0 and one which is certainly available in other trial presentation apps is a blank whiteboard for drawing. This was a feature TrialPad had to include in the new version and it has all of the standard features you would expect: multi-colored drawing pens with variable widths, the ability to erase and undo drawings and the ability to save the whiteboard, email it or add it to DropBox directly from TrialPad 2.0. This feature is quickly becoming a standard feature in these apps and it’s good to see TrialPad getting on board.

KEYNOTE VIEWING

While most developers will not understand why, TrialPad’s new feature of allowing keynote presentations to be displayed in TrialPad 2.0 is probably one of the most welcome for me as a Mac-using trial lawyer and fanatic fan of Apple’s Keynote. I don’t know of any other trial presentation app which will allow you to bring in Keynotes into the app and display them (it shows them slide by slide), annotate on them and save them using the HotDocs feature, but I was really excited when I saw this ability in TrialPad 2.0. Now when I want to bring in portions of my opening and show them to a witness, to demonstrate the jury the credibility of exactly the slide I showed them earlier, I can open my Keynote in TrialPad 2.0 and mark on the actual slide, emphasizing certain parts, etc… this was a really nice touch and another I didn’t expect from the new version.

There are many other new features to TrialPad 2.0, such as importing of PowerPoint slides, multi-page TIF’s, list view of cases, exporting of pages as PDF’s with or without annotations, moving exhibits between cases, multi-colored laser tool (one of my favorites) to name but a few. TrialPad has just risen the bar for other trial presentation apps with all of these new features and it will be exciting to see what this new competition will foster in this growing market!

TrialPad’s initial cost is $89.99, which is certainly higher than any of the other trial presentation apps out there. However, given the attention to detail in the user interface, highlight readability, split screen feature, multi-callout functions, and the rest, $89.99 is certainly worth the cost of the app.

We will be going to trial with TrialPad twice in July so be sure to check back here as we put TrialPad through its paces in a real court-room setting. We are looking forward to what all of these apps have to offer and are now even more excited for the iOS 5 update to come out bringing with it wireless displaying of these apps on the AppleTV.

For my readers, I have obtained 4 free passes to my webinar. Simply email me at finis[at]TechnoEsq.com and the first four readers who email me. I look forward to seeing everyone there and should you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

A few seats are still available so if you would like more information you can either call Amy Preher at the KJA at 502-339-8890 or you can register here.

There are a number of trial presentation apps in the App Store for the iPad which have all of those features but the one feature every trial lawyer needs – callouts. Callouts are those boxes which zoom in on a particular area of a document. We’ve shown you an early look at TrialPad 2.0 which has them (and we’ve spoken with the developer Ian who has advised us that 2.0 has been submitted to the App Store) but unfortunately Exhibit A has beaten every other app to the punch with the release of v.1.3.0. Among other things, the new version of Exhibit A has true callouts, block highlights, redaction features, exporting of exhibits via email and a completely new interface. Let’s take a look at these new features.

CALLOUTS
Let’s just get to the guts of this update. Without the ability to do a callout of a portion of an exhibit, trial presentations on the iPad weren’t truly competing with anyone except for themselves. Now that we finally have an app which can do it, others will follow suit out of necessity. To create a callout in Exhibit A, you simply open an exhibit and select the “Tools” button to select the callout icon on the far right. Creating the callout is as simple as sliding your finger from where you want the upper left side of the callout window to start and sliding to where you want it to end. If you’ve ever used a trial presentation program on a PC, it’s exactly the same except you use your finger or stylus instead of the mouse.

As you can see the callout is presented beautifully, with the underlying exhibit greyed-out and the callout contrasted against the background, perfectly sized.

While it is nicely displayed, I have a few issues with the callout feature which I am sure will be addressed in future updates. First, the annotations made on an exhibit do not get “called-out”. For example, if I create highlights, draw marks or other annotations on an exhibit, and then callout that area, those markings do not show up in the callout as you can see below.

This is the sort of thing that happens in early versions of software and is missed by programmers since they don’t typically foresee this sort of usage of a tool. While it may seem minor, this is certainly something which must be fixed before using Exhibit A in trial or a courtroom setting.

BLOCK HIGHLIGHTS
This feature is pretty straight-forward but seems to be ignored by some other developers. Many times it is necessary to highlight portions of an exhibit and so other apps allow this by giving you a free-hand highlighting tool, which Exhibit A also provides. However, when highlighting lines of text or entire paragraphs, using the free-hand tool is cumbersome and to be blunt, messy. The inability to create nice blocks of highlighted text is definitely an issue in other apps and so the inclusion of this in the latest version of Exhibit A is most welcome. My only complaint about this feature is not really about the feature but in the way highlights in general are created in Exhibit A as well as most other trial presentation apps save for TrialPad. Instead of creating a highlight which increases the contrast with the text below, Exhibit A merely places a semi-transparent block of yellow on top of the text, thereby making it difficult to read the text below and negating the point behind highlighting, to call attention to a part of an exhibit. I have provided examples below of highlighted text in Exhibit A and TrialPad to better visualize this oversight.

Exhibit A

TrialPad 1.0

REDACTION
This works just like the block highlights, except allows the user to redact portions of an exhibit. For some reason developers keep putting this into their apps, probably because ‘redaction’ sounds like a legal term. In practicality, your exhibit should probably be redacted before trial using a desktop app. Regardless, it works as advertised, allowing for redacted areas to appear as either a block of white, black, red, green or blue. To use redaction, it is selected in the same tool area as highlighting. Problem, and this is a MAJOR one: when you redact an area, if you make a callout of it, the text below appears! Why? Because the callout feature does not callout annotations and the redaction tool is simply another annotation. This oversight makes the redaction feature incredibly dangerous and could potentially cause a mistrial. It must be fixed ASAP.

INTERFACE
I must say the new interface for Exhibit A is nice, albeit with a few quirks. Once you get used to how things are accessed however, most functions are quite seamless. As you can see below, the creation of cases is accomplished at the main screen, as expected. There is direct access to DropBox from this main screen which allows for creation of DropBox folders, downloading of multiple files and folders as well as uploading of exhibits from Exhibit A into DropBox.

This view provides a good overview of each case, displayed cunningly as a briefcase, as well, with a display of how many exhibits are in each case below the name of the case.

Importing into Exhibit A is performed either by accessing the DropBox icon at the main screen or by opening a case and selecting the “My Photos” button for images already on the iPad. Subfolders are available to sort your exhibits, thus recreating the standard structure of folders used in the courtroom for trial. Exhibits can also be added via WiFi, FTP, iTunes or email and will appear in this area once imported.

One perhaps most overlooked feature of Exhibit A is the laserpointer feature. available when an exhibit is shown, the tool displays a nice bright red laser looking pointer which follows your finger as you drag it across the exhibit. This is quite helpful given the drowning out which occurs when a laserpointer is used on a television screen or projector screen. Often times the only solution is a much stronger or brighter colored laserpointer which can potentially harm jurors’ eyes.

While I definitely like Exhibit A and applaud their effort at being the first among the iPad trial presentation apps to provide us with all of the necessary tools for effectively presenting exhibits at trial I cannot yet recommend Exhibit A for one reason, speed. When creating a callout from an exhibit, there is a noticeable and almost agonizing delay between letting go of the callout area and the rendering of the callout. This delay is so long in fact that I was able to capture two screen captures as the callout was rendered. This delay, while mildly annoying while trying out Exhibit A, is a deal-breaker for use in front of a jury. This is not a limitation of the iPad in any way, I can assure you, since I have developer version of two trial presentation programs which both handle callouts with ease and without any delay. Until Exhibit A fixes this, the new callout feature is just a nice breath of fresh air. Of course, once fixed, Exhibit A will become the trial presentation app of choice until the others can catch up.

We still have seats available for those interested. Tad Thomas will be speaking about the practical aspects of using an iPad in a paperless office while Mike Stevens gives us basic tech tips for non-geeks. We also have Benham Sims talking about using the iPad in a criminal practice, Larry Port talking about cloud computing, Bill Roach will present on affordable and EASY to use trial presentation programs for the PC, and I’ll be talking about litigation and trial apps for the iPad.

You’re really missing out if you don’t attend this seminar. More information can be found here.

I’ve spoken over 10 times this year at various seminars on how lawyers can use their iPads in their legal practice and I’m thrilled to announce my next speaking event on June 2, 2011. This will be a webinar so even if you can’t make it to one of my live “performances” you can see what all of the hoopla is about from the comfort of your desk! I have many new apps to discuss and am thrilled to be talking about some late comers to the legal iPad market as well as show some apps which aren’t even for sale in the iTunes store yet.

Join me for what is sure to be a great webinar at 3:00 EST on June 2, 2011. You can register here and also visit the link if you would like more information. This webinar is approved or is pending approval for credit in the following states:  AL, AR, BC, CA, CO, FL, IN, KY, LA, MO, MT, NE, NV, RI, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WI, WY and at only $129.00 is a steal. I hope to see you there!

I am speaking at 10:45 am at the ISTA Conference Center but make sure to check out the other great speakers, including Matthew Schad on Trial Presentations, paperless offices and other legal techie stuff.  It is one seminar you don’t want to miss and if you come, be sure to say hi if you see me!

If you haven’t seen RocketCLE, they offer virtual CLE seminars viewable at any time for extremely reasonable prices. At $9.99, my iPad for Lawyers seminar is a bargain and if I say so myself, quite good. Should you be on the fence about purchasing the seminar, email me and I will tell you all the reasons you should purchase it.