Generating reports that condense and simplify huge volumes of data in full text documents will prove invaluable in your case preparation and trial. Using the report functions of full text programs can save countless hours of summarization and preparation.

Report options should enable the viewer to view, print, or export custom reports to other software applications such as WordPerfect™, Word™, etc. Reports should be able to be created for individual files, issues, dates, or keywords in notes.

Some full text reports along with the features are:

• Digest - This report allows you to manually capture a portion of text from within a document and send it to a computer file or print it out on a report. This is useful for digesting large documents by copying only the necessary and important information to the report. Advanced full text programs will automatically transfer the deposition name, volume number and page and line number to the digest, word processor or database form. This report is especially useful and time saving when you are combining all the testimony of witnesses to support a motion for summary judgment on a particular element of your case. Also, when preparing your trial notebook for direct or cross examination, you can “cut” only the important testimony from a deposition and insert it into your trial notebook with all page and line numbers intact.
• Vocabulary Listing - This report will provide a complete or partial list of any words contained within a document or case file. If you want, this report also can provide the number and location of each occurrence of a word. Words such as asbestos, earnings, and speed can be printed out with document, page, and line locations for easy reference to your full text documents. Such reports will increase your understanding of what the key terms are that are being used in the case. With this knowledge, one can then prepare search phrases that are more precise.
• Surrounding Text Report - This report is similar to the above report, except those full text programs will automatically print the text surrounding a word. The number of lines before and after the word is generally user defined.
• Enhancement Report - This report will give you a quick and complete summary of the enhancements to your case. It can also generate a report of enhancements that occur, followed by a list of the document locations in which they occur. Note that the enhancements can be ordered alphanumerically, depending on the program. See prior section on Enhancements.
• Date Summary - This generates a report of your enhancements in a chronological format. If the time sequence is important, such as in a malpractice case or contract negotiations, then a chronological report can be generated based on the user-imputed dates for certain events testified to in the deposition or in other documents. · Occurrences - A useful feature in some full text programs is a display of all the occurrences of a search request. The occurrence display will show all occurrences of the master word by both page and line number.

Full Text Features and Products.

Some full text features to consider:

• Indexing capability.
• Advanced searching capabilities.
• Report formats.
• Adding enhancements and annotations.
• Exporting reports or files to other program formats.
• Searches in both text and annotation (and database if available) simultaneously.
• Vendor history and cost of product.
• Ease of use and installation difficulty.
• Can existing collection of full text documents be imported.
• Is it scalable?
• Text synchronization with video.
• Cross - referencing links to sound, images and video.
• Voice annotation capability.
• OCR capability.
• Accepts standard ASCII documents without conversion to proprietary format.
• Training program and manuals and technical assistance.
• Security.
• Outline browsing - returns only the parts of the document that include the text search sting.
• Can it search, retrieve and display adobe acrobat file information?
• How many different formats does the software search?
• Does it convert files to HTML for viewing via a web browser?
• Does it have a customizable synonym feature - car, automobile, coupe, sedan, limousine, and taxi?

Products: Text retrieval software can either be generic (horizontal consumer market) or legal specific (vertical legal market). Generic software is usually less expensive and will perform full text searches very well. Legal specific full text packages are generally more expensive and are customized for use in the legal profession. For example, customized features may include maintaining the name, volume, page and line number integrity for a deposition in the full text program itself. What this means is that if you “digest” specific passages of text into a file, it will format the text with accurate name, volume, page and line numbers. This is extremely useful and efficient for attaching testimony to motions for summary judgments, etc. Other “legal specific” features include inserting enhancements such as notes, legal issue coding, dates, image attachments, and cross-referencing. Subsequent searches can include the text, notes, cross-references and other enhancements. Reports are also generally customized for legal specific needs.

Legal specific full text software includes Summation™ (www.summation.com), which includes an integrated full text, database, outliner, and imaging program; LiveNote™ (www.livenote.com), which includes real-time and full text modules and Reallegal (www.reallegal.com) e-transcript™ which is a full text module.