YesLaw Online Attorney Tips

Welcome to YesLaw Online. This web service allows users to view deposition transcripts, linked exhibit documents, and synchronized video; highlight, annotate, and make video clips of important transcript passages, and share this work with others via the internet.

YesLaw Online is the solution to:

§ Easily and instantly share large video clips within the office or across the country

§ Quickly search all exhibit documents, deposition transcripts, and video within the case

§ Organize and share large document deposits for complex litigation

§ Securely share large documents with consulting attorneys or expert witnesses

§ Edit and organize deposition video clips for case presentation software like Sanction™

§ Consult with other attorneys on issues using a free-form, multi-user wiki forum

YesLaw Online compliments the YesLawCD and YesLawDVD products you receive from your deposition service provider that includes synchronized transcripts, linked exhibits, video, and the software to highlight and annotate the transcript, make video clips, and share this work with others.

This help file provides an introduction to the YesLaw Online Transcript-Video Viewer. The following few pages should answer most of your questions regarding the YesLaw Online Transcript-Video Viewer; however, should you not find the answer here you might contact us by email at support@yeslaw.net or through our toll-free telephone number (800.910.5009).

Help

If you are having trouble, the following paragraphs provide instructions to overcome the most common difficulties.

I Cannot View Documents – I Keep Getting a Browser Error

If you running a browser other than Internet Explorer, trying accessing the site using an Internet Explorer browser.

If you are running Vista with User Access Controls enabled, running Windows 7 and have selected anything but the lowest security setting, or otherwise are having difficulty viewing documents, please try the following...

Select the My Profile menu item (the far left menu item at the top).

Then check the Use Java applet Viewer checkbox item (the last item on the list). Once the checkbox is checked, click Update My Profile.

Getting Started

Welcome to YesLaw Online. To make full use of the site, you will need to turn-off your web browser pop-up blocker software as the video and documents are viewed within separate, pop-up windows. To view documents, you will need to give permission to allow an ActiveX control to download and install the first time you view a document. This need only be done once. The site also requires secure, encrypted internet communications (https). If you are behind a proxy server or firewall that prevents secure communications, you will be unable to access this site. Contact you network administrator to allow HTTPS, Port 443 web communications.

Use with Internet Explorer

Within Internet Explorer, from the Tools menu, select the Pop-up Blocker/pop-up Blocker Settings… menu item shown below.

In the Address of Web site to allow: entry box, type *.yeslawonline.com and click the Add button. Confirm the entry is added to the Allowed sites: list and click Close. This need only be done once.

Use with Firefox

Within Firefox, select the Options… from the Tools menu.

Then select the Content tab and click the Exceptions button opposite the Block pop-up windows item.

In the Address of web site: entry box, type *.yeslawonline.com and click the Allow button. Confirm the entry is made to the Site list and click Close. This need only be done once.

Use with Safari

Within Safari, you will need to disable the pop-up blocker by selecting Preferences… from the Edit menu, then select the Security tab. Then ensure that the Block pop-up windows item is unchecked.

Alternatively, you may use the keyboard shortcut: hold down both the Ctrl and Shift keys and type the letter “K.”

The current status of the blocking software is shown by a check mark adjacent to the Block Pop-Up Windows menu item within the Edit menu. If the check mark is present, pop-up windows are being blocked and you will need to disable this blocking.

Online Repository Use Cases

This on-line repository can be used in a number of different ways by end users:

§ Case Repository for Transcripts, Video, Exhibits, Documents and Discussions

§ Document Depository

§ Deposition Library

§ Training Library

§ Firm Wiki or Forum

§ Settlement Negotiations and Trial Preparation

Case Repository

Transcripts, deposition video, and deposition exhibits will be supplied by your deposition service provider – court reporter and/or legal videographer. As a user, you may upload documents to the case as well. Uploading documents is a secure and easy way to transfer large documents or document sets to other users across town or across the country.

Document Depository

You may be provided on-line access to document deposits for complex litigation matters by your court reporting company through this web interface. The reporting company provides this convenient yet secure view access as a service and may further allow you to order document set or deposit hard copies as an additional service. To ensure the integrity of the documents, users have view-only access and cannot upload additional documents nor edit the existing documents within the document deposits.

Deposition Library

Attorney firms may wish to accumulate a library of video depositions for a series of similar cases. On-line access allows attorneys and expert witnesses across the country with internet access and a web browser to easily view deposition transcripts, videos (including designated video clips) and exhibit documents without concern for video formats and software licenses.

The Deposition Library may also be used as a library of deposition content for internal training and reference. More senior attorneys may direct junior attorneys to examples of how to handle difficult situations with depositions. This library may be thought of as a “game film” library where examples of opposing counsel’s and expert’s past depositions may be reviewed in preparation for an upcoming deposition.

Training Library

Although this repository anticipates the special needs of hosting deposition content, the library may include general training material – not deposition content – including employee training content. To maximize the use, convenience and effectiveness of the library, though, the video content should be transcribed to more easily locate specific topic areas or content for review. This enables users to do text searches to find the specific content quickly.

Firm Wiki or Forum

The on-line wiki or forum feature lends itself for users to post discussions, recent events and their legal ramifications, topic reference documents, and possible boiler-plate contract language for consultation within large firms.

Settlement or Trial Preparation

As a case develops, and depositions are taken and reviewed, users will inevitably book mark significant case material and make video clips of important video deposition responses. Many of these video clips will be used ultimately in settlement negotiations and perhaps trial. This website includes video clip export to trial presentation software such as Sanction to minimize rework to recreate clips within the trial software when trial becomes unavoidable.

Organization of Case Material

Case material is presented in a familiar “case tree” structure with each case a separate entry in the case tree at the highest level in the hierarchy.

Within each matter, material is then organized with like material. Video and video depositions along with related material such as video deposition exhibits are located within a folder named Videos. Transcripts (without video) are located within a folder named Transcripts. Documents are stored in a folder named Documents. And Discussion or Issue threads are located within the folder named Discussions / Issues.

Within the Videos folder, each video deposition is listed by deponent and deposition date. Then within each video or video deposition, the edited video clips, exhibit documents, and transcript highlights (for issues) and bookmarks (for quick re-locating content) have their own folder. To view a video deposition, mouse-click the video deposition and video and transcript viewer window will open. More on the use of transcript-video viewer later.

To view only a previously edited and saved video clip, click on the video clip within the Clips folder. Similarly to view an exhibit document, click on the exhibit document within the Exhibits folder and a document viewer window will open.

Document Manager

The Document Manager Tab, located at the bottom of case tree window, is used to create a new folder or rename an existing folder, update information for an existing folder, delete a folder and delete a document. Mouse click the Document Manager tab, and select the function to be performed. When creating or renaming a folder, the tab will require the new name of the folder. To upload a document, you will be required to browse your computer and select the file to be uploaded. During the upload process, the application will request additional meta data for the file. This meta data, such as Bates stamping information, is optional but will enable faster and more convenient use through faster advanced searches, document sorting, and document summaries.

Playing the Deposition Video

To play the video, you may click a transcript line and the video will play the video from the corresponding video location or you may click the Play-Pause button () below the video and the video will begin playback from the beginning or from the point it was last paused.

To jump forward to the beginning of the next page within the transcript, click the next page button (). To jump back to the beginning of the previous page within the transcript, click the previous page button ().

The playback speed can be increased to scan quickly forward through the video by selecting the fast forward scan button (). You will be able to observe the video, but the audio will not play.

Highlighting Deposition Transcript

To highlight portions of the transcript text, click-down and drag over the desired transcript text and then click the highlight button () below the transcript. You have many different highlight issue/colors to choose from. You may select the different colors from the color menu called by clicking the pull-down menu arrow of the highlight tool and selecting the color chooser button (). Then click the checkbox to select the desired issue/color for future highlights. The chosen issue/color will remain selected until another issue/color is chosen.

To change the text description of the Issue/Color, click on the existing description, and you may enter a new issue description.

To select a new highlight color for the issue, click the color selector control () to the right of each issue description – a color select pallet will pop-up. Then click on the on the new color desired from the pallet of available colors. Once you have entered your desired issue text description and chosen the corresponding highlight color, click the done button () in the lower right corner of the window.

To remove the highlight from a single transcript passage, click the remove highlights button () adjacent to the highlight button. The cursor will change to a delete highlights icon – a red circle with a minus sign in the center, and the delete highlights button will highlight in a blue color to indicate that the delete highlights function is active. Then mouse-click on a highlighted passage, and the highlight will be removed. You may continue to click on highlighted transcript passages to remove more highlighting. When finished, select the highlights button () again, and the cursor will return to normal, and the delete highlights button will no longer be highlighted rather the normal highlights button will be shown and active again..

To remove all the highlights from a transcript, you may select the Delete All Highlights from the Edit menu.

Searching Transcript Text

To search the transcript text, click in the Search Term Entry box and type in your search term, then click the Go button (). The search will begin at the current line in the transcript and search forward. Click the Go button to find successive search hits. Upon reaching the end of the transcript, the search will continue from the beginning of the transcript.

Once the entire transcript has been searched and all hits have been shown, a message box will appear to indicate the entire transcript has been searched. This will warn you when you have searched the entire transcript text and are now duplicating your search.

Search from the deposition transcript-video viewer only searches the transcript text. To search across all transcripts, exhibits and documents for the case, use the comprehensive case search function.

Exhibit Hyperlinks

An exhibit link connects a document to a transcript passage and allows a user to quickly click and view a document mentioned in the transcript. The hyperlink will appear in blue, underlined text similar to links within web pages such as used at the beginning of this web document. To create a hyperlink, select the corresponding transcript text and click the Exhibit Link button (). A list of already available exhibits is provided. You may select from the existing exhibits list, by clicking on the Exhibit and then clicking the Done button (), or add (upload) a new exhibit document by clicking the Add button () at the bottom of the window. If you choose to upload to add an exhibit document from your computer, a file browser will open and you may upload one or more documents. These added documents will then be available for others to view, link-to and download. Uploaded documents will be search indexed such that search “hits” within the document will be shown. The search indexing takes a few moments so searches immediately after a document upload may not provide relevant hits within this document. To cancel the linking process, click the Cancel button () at the bottom.

To view a linked exhibit, simply click on the hyperlinked transcript text. You’ll recognize the links by the blue colored, underlined text and the exhibit icon to the left of the transcript text.

Video Clips

Managing your synchronized deposition video online makes the use of video so easy it is much more likely to be used. Digging through archives to find the video media, locating the proper player or software, and then watching the video to find the desired content is not convenient. It is so cumbersome; attorneys relegate video only for trial. With online access to video, finding video is simply a matter of logging in and text searching the transcript. Because the video is synchronized to the transcript, clicking on a transcript line immediately plays the corresponding video. Online tools enable simple video clip creation. Other users can login to view the clips or the clips can be emailed by including a hyperlink within your email. No special software license or software install is required for viewing clips, just a web browser and internet access.

If and when it comes time for trial, the clips can be emailed as a hyperlink to opposing counsel and the judge for review. Requested changes can be made instantly, online and new clips emailed. Powerful video evidence is now easy and convenient.

Making Video Clips

To make a video clip, click and drag over the corresponding transcript text and then click the make-video-clip button () below the transcript. Alternatively, if you do not highlight a transcript selection, clicking the make-video-clip button will call the Clips dialog box as shown below. All the currently created clips are shown to in the list on the right. To make a new clip, rather than dragging over and highlighting the corresponding transcript text, you may enter the beginning and ending transcript page and line number designations. First enter the clip name to be created, then enter the first video clip segment, beginning and ending page and line numbers, and then click the add segment button (). The page:line designations are added to the clip segments list. To create a composite clip of more than one page:line designation, continue to add segments until complete. The segments can be re-ordered by selecting the segment in the Clip Segments list and clicking the move-up () or move-down () button. A segment can be removed using the segment delete () button.

Editing Video Clips

To edit an existing video clip, recall the Video Clips window by clicking the Video Clip button () without any transcript text selected. Then select the video clip to be edited by clicking on the video clip in the All Clips list to the right. Then select the Edit Clip button (). The individual clip segments will show in the list to the left. You may reorder the segments using the move-up () or move-down () buttons. You may add a new segment by entering a segment beginning and ending page:line designation and clicking the add segment button () then reposition the segment with the move-up or move-down buttons. Or you may delete an existing segment using the delete segment () button.

Merging Video Clips

To merge existing video clips, recall the Video Clips window by clicking the Video Clip button () without any transcript text selected. Then select the video clips to be merged by control-clicking on the video clips in the All Clips list to the right. Then select the Merge Clips button (). A new clip will be created from the selected component clips. The component clips will be shown in the Clip Segments list to the left. You may reorder the segments using the move-up () or move-down () buttons. You may add a new segment by entering a segment beginning and ending page:line designation and clicking the add segment button () then reposition the segment with the move-up or move-down buttons. Or you may delete an existing segment using the delete segment () button.

Deleting Video Clips

To delete existing video clips, recall the Video Clips window by clicking the Video Clip button () without any transcript text selected. Then select the video clip to be deleted by clicking on the video clip in the All Clips list to the right. Then select the Delete Clip(s) button ().

Emailing Video Clips

To email a video clip to another user, click the email video clip button at the bottom of the transcript (). The available (already edited and saved) clips are shown in a list on the far left. Click to select an individual clip, control-click to select additional clips, or shift click to select a range of clips. The selected clips will highlight in grey. Then select one or more users to email the clips to by clicking the check box adjacent to their names. Next enter a brief explanatory note in the box to the far right and finally click the send button () below the Explanatory Note box.

Alternatively, once the clips are selected, you may copy that will be sent to the other users by clicking the Copy URL button () in the lower right. This copies to the clip board the hyperlinks for accessing the individual links. You may then paste the links into you own email application to forward the links to other users. Alternatively you can drag over the links that will appear in the box immediately below the clip list and select copy to later paste them into your own email. If you are using your own email, you will have a much larger space for introductory or explanatory notes.

To clear your selections and begin again, click the Reset button () in the bottom left corner.

Searching Depositions and Documents

The SEARCH tab provides tools to search the documents, deposition transcripts, and deposition video clips. Two radio buttons near the top of the search tab selects whether the search is across the selected case or all the cases shown to the left. The search is initiated by entering a search term or phrase into the provided Search field and clicking Go.

Advanced Searched Tools

To access the “Advanced Search” functions click the blue Advanced Search text to the right of the Go button and the screen will update with additional search options. To create your advanced search query, fill in the fields provided. They are fairly self-explanatory, but described in more detail below. As you enter your search terms, the search query is created and shown in the Search Query box near the bottom. If the fields above do not provide enough space for your more complicated search queries, you can manually enter your search query using the model of the automatically generated search query created by entering words or phrases in the fields above. That is you can create more complicated queries than allowed by the limited fields above by using the generated queries as a model and entering you more complicated queries directly into the Search query box at the bottom.

You may save your searches to be used again at a later time using the Save function at the bottom of the SEARCH tab.

Boolean Search Option

To find documents containing one or more words, simply enter the search words. To find a phrase, enter the phrase in quotation marks. To exclude documents from the search results if it contains a certain word, enter the word in the NOT field or place a “minus sign” in from of the term in the Search Query entry box. To find documents that contain one word OR another word, enter the options in the OR fields or enter the words in the Search Query box divided by the word “OR.” For example you can enter apple OR banana. To find documents that contain the word apple or banana and the word pie but not the word blueberry,
enter apple OR banana pie –blueberry.

Proximity Search Option

To find all occurrences of a word or phrase that appears within n words or another word or phrase, use the proximity search. For example, if you enter apple within 1 word of pie, apple pie, apple rhubarb pie and apple crunch pie will be found but not apple and blueberry pie as “and blueberry” are two words. To use a proximity search within the Search Query entry box, place a “w/” followed by the number (0-9) of intervening words between the two search terms. So to find apple within one word of pie, enter apple w/1 pie.

Stemming Search Option

Enabling the stemming option will find different forms of the search word. So with the stemming search option enabled, a search for bake would find all occurrences of bake, bakes, baked, and baking. To enable the stemming option in the Search Query entry box, append an asterisk to the end of the word (bake*).

Fuzzy Search Option

The fuzzy search is used for perhaps poor copies of documents that have been OCR’d. The copy may be sufficiently poor that the OCR software may misinterpret an e as a c. With the fuzzy search option enabled and the letters parameter set to 1, the search algorithm will find all occurrences of the search word and words that differ only by one letter. So a search for the word parts with the fuzzy search option enabled would find all occurrences of parts, Paris and tarts. To enable the fuzzy search option in the Search Query entry box, insert one or more % characters into the word – one for each letter of “fuzziness.” So to find all words within one letter of parts, enter p%arts.

Synonym Search Option

With the synonym search option enabled, the search engine finds all occurrences of the search term and synonyms of the search term. So if you were to search for the word search, the search engine would also find the words seek and look. To enable the synonym option in the Search Query entry box, append an ampersand to the end of the word. So to find all occurrences of search and synonyms of search, enter search&.

Phonic Homonyms Search Option

With the phonic homonym search option enabled, the search engine finds all occurrences of the search term and homonyms of the search term. So if you were to search for the word break, the search engine would also find the word brake. Or if you were to search for their, the search engine would find there, and they’re. To enable the homonym option in the Search Query entry box, precede the word with a “pound sign” (#). So to find all occurrence of brake and homonyms of brake, enter #brake.

Issues/Discussions – Your Online Shared Case Notebook

All online cases have an Issues/Discussion forum or wiki found in the case tree and represented by the discussion bubbles: . Users that have more than view-only privileges can create or add Issues containing multiple Discussion threads, each a series of user contributions or Comments. The format is a simple forum rather than a fully-threaded forum so contributions are added sequentially – one cannot reply-only to another user’s particular post. View-only users can see the posts of others but cannot directly contribute.

Adding an Issue/Discussion

Issues are created by selecting or clicking Issues / Discussions within the case tree and then clicking the located in the upper-right of the Case Issue Discussions Forum tab. The new Issue Name and first Discussion Name are entered through a pop-up box.

Additional discussions can be added to an issue by first selecting the issue within the case tree and then clicking .

Posting Comments

To post a comment, first select the issue/discussion in the case tree, and then click . A comment cannot be inserted immediately following another comment but is added in sequential order to the bottom of the discussion. A rich-text editor is provided to type in your Comment Title and comments. You may type your entry or copy and paste text from another source while maintaining the formatting. To edit your comment at any time, navigate to the comment by selecting the issue/discussion within the case tree then scroll down to your comment and click [edit] shown immediately following your comment title.

Adding Hyperlinks to Clips, Documents, Issue Bookmarks, Highlights and Webpages

Users can compose their comments with rich-formatted text and include hyperlinks to video depositions, video clips, exhibit documents, issue-bookmark highlights, documents, and even other discussions using drag-n-drop from the case tree. Internet and intranet web page URLs may be included by copy-and-paste.

Renaming Issues and Discussions

Users have the ability to edit or delete their (and only their) issues, discussions, or comments at any time by clicking the [edit] link immediately following the Issue or Discussion name in the Case Issue Discussion tab (not in the case tree). Issues and discussions may be renamed by the creator. Discussions without comments may be deleted by the creator, and issues without discussions may be deleted by the creator.

This forum becomes a powerful collaborative annotation tool to organize case content, outline arguments, construct lists and share within a workgroup. The function is far beyond yellow sticky notes, it is an online shared case notebook.