Thank you to Lit Software for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month. Lit Software has a long history of helping attorneys use iPads in a law practice. Shortly after the iPad was first released in 2010, the company released TrialPad, an app that attorneys can use to present evidence to a jury, judge, or other audience. It was one of the first professional apps for any profession, and countless attorneys have successfully used this app over the years. Here is my review.
The second app for attorneys created by Lit Software was TranscriptPad (my review). I know of no better way to manage, annotate, and work with transcripts in a law practice. It easily beats working with paper or any other software solution out there. The complex litigation and other cases that I work on don't go to trial very often, but I do work with depositions all the time, so TranscriptPad is the Lit Software app that gets the most use on my iPad.
More recently, Lit Software released DocReviewApp (my review). This is an app that you can use to review and annotate documents on your iPad, so this app is especially useful during the request for production of documents process.
I got a chance to catch up with the folks at Lit Software when I was at ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago last month, and I was excited to hear about TimelinePad, an app that the company is currently working on which will let you create timelines to explain to a jury and others how certain facts, documents, etc. work together chronologically.
In addition to coming up with new apps for attorneys, the company is constantly working on improvements to its existing apps. One improvement that the company added to TranscriptPad last year is the ability to quickly create impeachment reports. At a trial or subsequent deposition, attorneys often impeach a witness based on inconsistent prior testimony, or perhaps the testimony of another witness. It is nice to present the quote of the witness on a big slide so that everyone — including the jury and the witness — can see the testimony. TranscriptPad can now create these slides in just seconds.
Here's how it works. After you have reviewed and annotated a deposition in TranscriptPad, all of the key testimony will be assigned to the issue codes that you selected for your case. Tap the Reports button and then in the list of PDF Report types, select the second option, Impeachment. Decide if you want a white or a black background, and select the annotations that you want to be turned into slides. For example, you might want to just create slides for one issue code.
Tap Create Report and you are done. The app then presents you with a multi-page PDF file in which each page is a different slide. The quote is large and easy to read on the slide, and the margins show the page and line number, deposition date, etc. to provide the textual context for everyone to see that this is taken directly from the deposition.
Do whatever you want with the PDF file — send it to TrialPad, email it, or open it with another app that you are using to present your evidence.
What is nice about this feature is that it works so quickly that you can even create slides just seconds before you need to present them. As soon as the witness says something that is inconsistent, you don't need to worry about whether you remembered last week to create an impeachment slide just in case this happened. The TranscriptPad app allows you to create the impression that you were prepared for this very testimony — even if you were just as surprised by everyone else at what the witness is now saying.
While the Impeachment Report feature is one of the newer features of a Lit Software app, it is just one the countless features that you can use to be a better attorney with these apps on your iPad. Thanks to Lit Software for sponsoring iPhone J.D. this month, and a big thank you to Lit Software for giving attorneys these powerful tools.
Click here to get TrialPad ($129.99): 
Click here to get TranscriptPad ($89.99):
Click here for DocReviewPad ($89.99):
Click here for the Ultimate Litigation Package (all three apps) ($299.99):
