When I started with New Jersey Legal I was hired as a customer service representative to help Dave MacDonald manage a really large document imaging project. The project was nationwide and included about 10,000 boxes.  The local part of the production was about 5,000 boxes and taking care of the local boxes was my job.  It was hard work and required a lot of attention to detail.  After a year of customer service as well as picking up and delivering over 500 boxes, Gary and Dave (the owners) invited me into their office to ask me a question. They asked if I would be interested in learning electronic trial presentation skills and begin working directly with attorneys on trial and said it would include software training for Sanction and Trial Director.  I jumped at the opportunity and within a couple of days I was off to Arizona for training.

After a lot of training and many, many hours of practice, I was assigned my first trial.  My first trial was a bench trial in Atlantic City.  It was a complex trial with over 40 video depositions and over one hundred thousand pages of exhibits.  Our client requested that we handle everything on their behalf.  So it began… my first trial.

The New Jersey Legal trial support team started by calling court reporters and requesting deposition transcripts and video of the depositions if they were filmed.  We then had to convert most of the video from either tape or VOB format to a digital MPEG format in order to synchronize the video along with the text from the respective deposition. When it was all said and done we had converted over 80 gigs of video and synchronized them with the text and made them ready for a Sanction court presentation.  We imported them into Sanction and indexed all the depositions in our presentation.  Now we were ready for clip creation.  The law firm gave us multiple time frames to create video clips for quick playback in Sanction during the trial.

We then took the clients Summation database (yes, all 100,000+ pages) and imported that into Sanction along with any available OCR text files to make them searchable on the fly during the electronic courtroom presentation. Any documents that did not contain text we OCR’d and prepared those files for Sanction as well. On many occasions during trial, we will need to perform text or index searches to locate a specific document and it is really easy if you OCR all the documents, index them properly when creating your case from the beginning.

The next step was to meet with law firm’s client, and learn more about the case.  We then use the new case information and our experience to develop custom graphics to help better present their case to the Judge.  The graphics are always interesting. No matter the case, the custom graphics almost always include timelines, call-outs, demonstratives, text highlighting and photos. This was a contract dispute so neither animations nor day in the life videos were needed.  One of the features in Sanction is the ability import a custom graphic (in this case a timeline), and link other documents or videos in the case to the time line.  The lead attorney appreciated the ability to zoom in on a specific time bubble on the timeline and have me click multiple links (depending on his train of thought at the time) to display supporting documents or video at the click of a mouse.  We were also able to output all of the video for the judge to take home and review before the next day’s testimony.

As a courtroom trial presenter, I am also responsible for our trial equipment transportation, set-up, and break-down. We bring computers, back-up devices, monitors, projectors, screens, printers, scanners, wireless cards, etc… Our equipment is excellent, very high end and robust.  At the conclusion of this trial, the judge asked me to stick around to print out the settlement documents, as our printers were better than what his chambers are equipped with. This was unique, as everyone else was dismissed and the attorneys, the judge, and I remained.

Our clients’ trial was a success.  The client got the settlement he wanted, the attorneys got to have a high end trial consultant at their disposal and I got my first trial under my belt.   I am glad I started at New Jersey Legal helping with customer service.  I like to think our company’s outstanding customer service helps our customers feel more comfortable when deciding to go to trial with a courtroom presentation professional.  Experience is New Jersey Legal’s most important asset and I am glad to be contributing to that bank of experience.  We have been providing litigation support for over 15 years and we plan on being around helping clients for the next 15.  I look forward to future posts, have a great day!

Ted Mazurek
Sanction Certified Trial Presenter

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