What Happens in Vegas: DRI Product Liability Conference

I had the pleasure this week of speaking at the DRI Product Liability Conference on the topic, “There’s an App For That,” along with Josh Fleming (Frost Brown Todd LLC). Josh is an attorney who has truly embraced technology and the iPad, replacing a lot of books and notepads with the ubiquitous little tablet. It was a treat sharing the session with him, as we offered two very different perspectives on iPad apps for lawyers and trial presentation in general.

A nice collection of legal apps

Most of the apps discussed have been reviewed on this blawg, and you may use the search feature to locate any specific app or topic. In this article, links are to articles containing relevant links to other reviews (e.g., the ExhibitView link will lead to reviews of other trial presentation apps). Trial Presentation apps covered (and shown) were TrialPad, Evidence, Exhibit A, ExhibitView, and TDmobile -- TrialDirector’s yet-to-be-released offering, which is expected to be available in a couple of months or so. In all fairness, I won’t write a review until the final release is ready to go, although I have been testing early versions. This app, according to inData, will be free. That could certainly shake up the trial presentation app market space.

One advantage TrialDirector has recently added is the ability to export a subset of exhibits all packaged for the iPad app. ExhibitView (for the PC) also has this capability, and according to Ian O’Flaherty (TrialPad), the exported data set will work with any of the trial presentation apps.

TrialDirector Export to iPad

In addition to these, Josh and I also covered several jury selection (voir dire) and monitoring apps, legal research and calendaring, and of course Dropbox, which seems to be the key to getting data into all of the apps. Josh also discussed several stylus options and keyboards for the iPad.

We wrapped our session by showing an actual “iBrief,” which contained embedded animation, video, and even a 3-D products model. This was probably the “ooh, ahh” moment of our presentation. It could be used for expert witnesses, mediations, depositions, and settlement conferences. The nice thing about the iPad is that you can easily capture the current screen at any time by simply hitting the two "on" buttons at the same time.

Please feel free to follow up with any questions either by posting them here, or by using the contact info links at the top of this page. I just had a couple of trials get pushed, so if you happen to need a little assistance in an upcoming matter…