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Chapter 6 - Computer Concepts and Legal Applications

Full Text Applications for the Legal Field

Some more powerful full text legal applications include:

  • Quickly retrieving important testimony of any witness;
  • Making summaries of depositions as you read the deposition on the screen, capturing any text in notes, and retrieving those annotations for powerful reports in a page, subject, or chronological format;
  • Identifying and sorting testimony by user selected issues or subjects, i.e., subjects such as work history or educational background;
  • Organizing all information witness Smith said concerning witness Jones and comparing it against other testimony given by witness Smith or Jones in other depositions or cases;
  • Organizing all the favorable and unfavorable admissions in the case;
  • Identifying and sorting events in chronological order;
  • Organizing all material that supports filing a motion for summary judgment;
  • Tracking testimony from multiple parties or experts about a particular issue or exhibit;
  • Pinpointing damaging testimony.
Legal specific full text programs set their files up as “cases”, “casefiles”, or “databases” that equate to one of your cases. The use of the term “database” is confusing here, since in computer language, it generally describes a specific computer application of isolating specific factual information in designated fields. However, some software companies define all material that is searched in a full text program as a “database”. Technically, it is a “database” of “full text documents”. This is to be contrasted with a “database” where structured fields are created, in which to store discrete identifiable information. With the risk of confusing the issue further, some litigators will create a document abstract database and then import the database into a “full text” program for search and retrieval purposes. For our purposes, full text will mean a document that contains numerous paragraphs and is not contained in a database field.
 

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