Thus creating a “summary” of the transcript. They read through the transcript, and when they find an important section or Q&A pair, they copy the text from the transcript and then paste it into the Word document. Then they write notes in the margins, or use a highlighter to mark important sections, or put little sticky notes / Post-it notes to mark important pages.Īnd to summarize a transcript, I see many folks open the text transcript on one side of their screen, and a blank Microsoft Word document on the other side of their screen. If you’ve been practicing for a while, you may have used RealLegal or LiveNote many years ago, which were both acquired by Thomson Reuters and subsequently incorporated into their Case Notebook product.īut even in law firms today where I see them using TextMap or Case Notebook, I only see them using those applications to STORE transcripts, and maybe search them.īut when lawyers want to ANNOTATE them or MARK THEM UP, they PRINT THEM OUT!
If you’ve ever worked with transcripts before on your computer, you’ve probably used software like TextMap from Lexis, or Case Notebook from Westlaw. This is Part 1 of my review of TranscriptPad which is an iPad-ONLY app to manage, search, annotate, and summarize transcript text files.