Information & Publications

Product Review: Trial Director 5
By Gordon Moffat,
Technical Services Manager

Trial Director 5, the latest offering from the inData Corporation of its flagship trial presentation software, contains new features and much-needed evolutional improvements that make it a key part of the litigator’s toolbox. The product’s new focus on ease-of-use and integration do much to keep it on a par with its main competitor, Verdict Systems’ Sanction 2.8.

The cardinal trait of this updated release, and one which might be considered a new feature as well as an enhancement of previous functionality, is the integration of the formerly separate modules into one application interface. In previous versions of the Trial Director suite, exhibit manipulation, staging and presentation functions were split among the discrete, albeit interdependent, Document Director, Deposition Director and Trial Director programs. In version 5, however, all work is done in an unified interface that is still intuitive to users of the older versions. This is a radical improvement that saves time, decreases the learning time for new users and reduces the clumsiness and potential for error of previous Trial Director revisions. TD5 removes the problem of having to switch back and forth between programs in order to fix exhibits “on the fly."

Another dramatic improvement is the ability to use a visual waveform tool to edit deposition video. Start and end points of clips, which are frequently a little bit out of synchronization regardless of the quality of the time coding process, can now be changed to match the desired designation much more accurately and easily.

A third major enrichment of an existing feature is the logical renaming of “Folders” to “Workbooks” and the addition of more functions. Working with “Folders” in older Trial Directors could be confusing, but TD5 simplifies them and amplifies their utility. Try right-clicking on a Workbook to access a host of new tools.

Trial Director 5 also contains several major new features worthy of mention in this review:

1. The software registration process, previously quite difficult, has been streamlined and simplified considerably.
2. Users gain the ability to issue-code transcript text in color.
3. The reporting feature is enhanced and augmented to allow material such as exhibit lists for court submission to be exported Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF, HTML or plain text formats.
4. Administrators can now use UNC paths instead of mapped or local drive letters or cryptic volume IDs for data locations
5. The Global Path Editor function allows broken file paths to be fixed with one tool, a great improvement over previous releases
6. Video clips can be extracted and sent to an e-mail or to an exported file through a simple process.
7. Integration with Microsoft PowerPoint is greatly enhanced.

Trial Director 5 is a fine tool for jury persuasion and is a worthy successor to previous versions. If there is a drawback, it is the rather hefty upgrade cost ($297.00) and the addition of a yearly maintenance fee ($119.00). Despite this, the new inclusions and improvements justify the cost--TD5 is a fine upgrade and a good investment.

LogicForce Consulting is a certified trainer and reseller for inData Trial Director 5. Please contact your LogicForce consultant to see a demonstration.

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Source: The LogicForce Letter, Summer 2006