ExhibitView Review – New Trial Presentation App

DISCLAIMER – While I was consulted on this app through its development, I received/will receive no compensation in any form.

ExhibitView for iPad

The trial presentation app selection has been pretty sparse with TrialPad easily beating every other competitor in terms of functionality, features and ease of use. Exhibit A and Evidence, the only other dedicated trial presentation apps come no where close to even competing with TrialPad. In my view I think that has changed and I think it is a very good thing. Competition fosters progress and the entry of ExhibitView into the trial presentation app offerings will hopefully result in even better features and updates from all of the developers of these apps.

As with all trial presentation apps except Trial Works, exhibits are added to ExhibitView for iPad via Dropbox. What sets it apart from the competition is the ability to use the PC version of ExhibitView to save a complete trial into iPad format. From there the case file can be transfered to ExhibitView for the iPad, complete with folder structures, videos and saved annotations. (I have been told that as of January 1st, the Save-As iPad feature will be available in ExhibitView which will copy Slideshows, Documents, Images, Saved Webpages and Folders to ExhibitView on the iPad, the ability to transfer video clips will be added in the near future).

DropBox Integration

Layout

The first thing you will notice about ExhibitView is the similarity in the layout between it and TrialPad. Lest you think ExhibitView copied TrialPad, the layout is actually based upon ExhibitView for the PC. Common to almost all trial presentation apps, the available exhibits are displayed in a pane to the left with the rest of the available area dominated by the display area which is divided into two sections. The two sections allow for the quick display of side by side exhibits,movies and/or documents by first touching the side you would like to display the item on and then selecting the item from the left hand pane. Want to only show one document? Don’t select one of the halves and select the item.

Layout

Controls are gathered along the top of the display section. While there are not text descriptions of the tools available, presumably due to space limitations, the icons are fairly self-explanatory. On the top right in Green is the On/Off button which controls whether the iPad is connecting to an external source (Apple TV, projector or television). When the projector is in the “On” position, a black screen is displayed on the external source. One of my first negative reactions to ExhibitView was the inclusion of ExhibitView’s name being displayed in the lower right hand-corner of the screen when the external source is turned on. I have spoken with the developers and this is not a marketing tool, which was my first suspicion, but instead a way of letting the user know that the external source is connected to the iPad and functioning properly with the app.

One of the most interesting features of ExhibitView not available in other apps is the inclusion of a “witness mode”. This mode is entered by moving the slide on the bottom left of the display area to “Screen Lock”. This rotates and locks the screen into a portrait mode with the left hand pane displaying the exhibits available removed. A color pallete is available at the bottom and the standard annotation buttons are visible at the top. This mode was created to allow for an attorney to be able to call an exibit up on the screen, enter this mode and hand the iPad to a witness on the stand or a deponent in a deposition. The witness is then able to annotate on the entire iPad without being able to see exhibits that are in the case file.

Witness Mode

I recently used this mode in a trial this past week involving an economist’s testimony. The report used was detailed in statistics and so we imported the exhibit into ExhibitView and entered Witness mode. The iPad was sending the output from ExhibitView to a 60″ television screen in front of the jury which was receiving the image wirelessly from the iPad through a connected Apple TV. From here, the economist used a stylus to simply draw on the iPad, marking specific lines as she discussed them and annotating key aspects of her report vital to our client’s claims. Needless to say, the jury was very impressed with this technology, in particular with the economist being able to stand in front of them and discuss the sources of the numbers as her annotations appeared wirelessly on the flat screen television. It was a $1.12 million verdict and the jury gave us every penny of the $283,000 asked for in future lost wages.

Features

ExhibitView is chock full of the standard features offered in the top of the line trial presentation apps on the iPad. Highlighting (done correctly with proper contrast with the text underneath), lines and free-hand drawing as well as callout boxes and pinch and zoom. Of course, the color choices for any of the annotations is diverse as is the width of any annotation. This is done by pressing down on the eraser or pen tool for 2-3 seconds, after which a color palette and line width selection will appear, allowing the user to select which color and width of the tool he/she prefers.

Eraser and Undo/Redo buttons are available in the Presentation Mode but are mysteriously absent from the Witness Mode. When asked about this omission the developer, Bill Roach, explained it was an attempt at simplifying the Witness Mode so as to not overwhelm the user with too many options. I personally feel it should always be present, but it is a matter of personal preference.

From any mode a snapshot feature is ever present in the form of a camera icon. This icon allows for a snapshot to be taken of the current exhibit, with annotations, so that pre-marked annotations as well as current annotations to an exhibit can be saved for later use or printing. One odd quirk of this feature is that the snapshot is actually stored in the case file’s main folder, not necessarily the same folder the original exhibit is displayed from. So for example, if the exhibit is from a folder two sub-folders from the main and a snapshot is taken of the exhibit with annotations, the resultant exhibit is stored in the main folder with the same name as the original with a “_1″ appended to the name. When this exhibit is displayed, the annotations have been flattened, or made permanent to that exhibit, but new annotations made be made to it.

Eraser Bug

As with any 1.0 version of software there are some issues I have found with ExhibitView for the iPad. For instance, when the user highlights a block of text, this highlighting appears to be able to be erased along with other annotations using the eraser tool. However, once the tool is de-selected, only the “drawing” annotations such as lines and free-hand pens are actually erased, the highlight returns to its original highlighting. Bill Roach has told me this is by design as users are meant to use the undo tool to remove a highlight instead of the eraser tool. Presumably, if too much of an area was selected for highlighting, instead of trying to erase the unwanted area, the user should hit the Undo button and then re-draw the area to be highlighted. While this does make sense, it does lead to a true bug in the software. When the aforementioned erasing of a highlighted area is done, if a callout box (zooming in using the callout tool to make a zoomed in box of the highlighted area) is done, the parts of the highlight which the user unsuccessfully attempted to erase show up as large black marks throughout the highlight within the callout box. I have brought this issue up to Bill and he has assured me it will be addressed in the next update to the app. Fortunately, once you are aware of this and know not to use the eraser to remove highlights, it is irrelevant, but if you are unaware of the issue, it could be quite embarrassing for an attorney in the middle of trial

Unfortunately, at this time ExhibitView is missing the ability to edit videos from directly within the app as TrialPad can do. This is less an oversight according to the developer, but more of a realistic view of the iPad’s abilities. From ExhibitView’s standpoint video editing and clipping is meant to be performed on the main computer running ExhibitView, where it can be done quickly and effectively, with the results transfered to the iPad. TrialPad on the other hand allows for trimming of videos directly on the iPad, which is nice if you want to make clips, but does nothing to assist in redacting portions of video depositions.

Single and Multiple Callouts

Neither TrialPad or ExhibitView will allow for the searching within exhibits for text though searching for exhibit names is available. This is still strictly a feature available in laptop trial presentation apps and depending on your usage, can be a requirement if you need to search for particular portions of a deposition in the middle of trial. Additionally, this feature goes hand-in-hand with synchronized depositions, so that particular parts of a deposition can be located, redacted, and clips made with ease. While this remains one of the main points most trial consultants use to point out the deficiencies in using iPad apps for trial presentations, the honest truth is that in my experience doing trial consulting and practicing in my own cases, this task is very rarely performed from the courtroom itself. Counsel is aware either well before the beginning of trial or at the very least the day before testimony will be played and thus the redactions can be performed on a desktop computer where it is both easier to use and done on a more powerful machine.

For the majority of trial attorneys, trial presentation programs are used in trial for annotations to exhibits. Callouts, highlighting, drawing and zooming in on photographs are the features used 90% of the time with trial presentation programs and these tasks are handled much more intuitively and effectively using iPad apps such as ExhibitView and TrialPad. This is completely ignoring the added benefit of ease of use by a single user and the all too important issue of cost. ExhibitView sells for $29.99 and TrialPad for $89.99, both apps FAR cheaper than the cheapest desktop/laptop trial presentation program available by over $400.

Leveraging their footprint in both the iPad and desktop/laptop markets however, ExhibitView is offering their iPad app for free (with a rebate) with the purchase of ExhibitView for the PC (four licenses) which has a current price of $499.

Conclusion

ExhibitView for the iPad is a most welcome sight to a marketplace dominated by TrialPad. Up to this point, TrialPad has done a fantastic job of keeping up with user requests in features and staying ahead of the game, however there has not been any true competition from the poor showings in Exhibit A and Evidence. Now that ExhibitView has entered the arena I can only hope that the two companies can foster even more advances in the trial presentation market for the iPad. While ExhibitView for the iPad or TrialPad do not offer all of the features in a full-featured computer trial presentation program, they will fit the needs of almost all lawyers in trial, without the need for a paid assistant or trial consultant present each day of trial. ExhibitView for the iPad can be purchased in the App Store here for the introductory price of $29.99. In my view, at this price, you will not find a more robust and feature rich trial presentation app on the iPad.

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