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Create Timelines for Your Cases to View, Share, and Edit From Any Device
April 26, 2019
Today's TechnoLawyer Buyer's Guide report covers the first cloud-based timeline creation and case document storage software designed for the legal profession.
Create Timelines for Your Cases to View, Share, and Edit from Any Device
Time plays a critical role in many criminal and civil cases. Therefore, displaying key events on a timeline is essential for depositions, settlement conferences, and trials — not to mention for your own analysis of the facts. Most legal timeline software remains bound to your PC, but a new timeline product runs in the cloud.
TrialLine in One Sentence
Law Father's TrialLine is cloud-based timeline creation software for lawyers that includes digital case document storage.
The Killer Feature
Travis Luther's wife needed to create timelines for her law practice but could not find a modern web app. So Luther, Law Father's founder and president, created a simple app for her. Other lawyers began asking for access. Sensing a market need, Luther spent several years developing TrialLine. Users of the software like it so much they refer to their timelines as "TrialLines."
Luther realized that lawyers need more than one timeline view so TrialLine offers four — Relative, Carousel, Slide, and List.
Relative View shows events in a temporally precise manner (the time distance between events), making it suitable for demonstrative evidence. TrialLine offers granularity down to the second so you can use it for injuries and other split-second incidents.
Carousel View displays events side-by-side in equal succession, while Slide View blows up events to consume the full screen similar to a PowerPoint presentation. List View offers a text specific spreadsheet-like experience that enables you to sort and filter by columns and isolate select events related to an issue of law or those that may require review by an expert witness. You can save various searches and views for later reference.
TrialLine offers two export options — export the Carousel View in a high-quality PNG image format for poster board printing or export your data in Word or Excel documents for full or category-specific case summaries.
"I discovered TrialLine while preparing an employment retaliation case for trial," says Sam Cannon, founder of Cannon Law. "Using TrialLine really helped us visualize the temporal relationship between my client's protected reports of sexual harassment to the retaliatory acts. In addition, by adding the defendant's pretextual justifications for its adverse actions as separate categories, we could display the lack of a temporal relationship between them and the adverse actions. This helped us simplify the trial."
TrialLine's Relative View shows events in a temporally precise manner.
Other Notable Features
TrialLine's event creation tool includes fields for the date and time, case-specific categories, Bates numbers, Exhibit numbers, professional providers, bills, text descriptions, and tags. You can also upload corresponding documents and videos and attach them to specific events. Your TrialLines display symbols on events to let you know they have associated categories and files.
As a case progresses, you and your colleagues can collaborate and append notes and comments to events. Additionally, "TrialLines can be easily shared online with clients and experts, allowing them to monitor case progress and contribute new or requested information," says Luther. Sharing occurs via a link in an email message. TrialLine displays all sharing history on one page, enabling you to easily revoke access.
What Else Should You Know?
For one user, TrialLine costs $9.99 per month for the software plus $9.99 per case per month for the document storage. Larger teams receive a discount (see the pricing page). The ability to store the entire case file in a HIPPA-compliant manner eliminates the need to use a digital archive provider like Iron Mountain. TrialLine splits the software and storage fee so that you can recover the latter from clients. Explore TrialLine and bookmark the website.
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Meet Neil J. Squillante
Neil J. Squillante is the founder and publisher of TechnoLawyer, an award-winning network of free email newsletters for lawyers and law office administrators. Many consider TechnoLawyer the only email subscription they need. Previously, Neil practiced commercial litigation at Am Law 100 firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher. He received his J.D. from UCLA School of Law and his B.A. from Duke University.
