Category: Podcast

In this podcast episode, host Elizabeth Larrick provides guidance for individuals new to virtual jury research, focusing on starting with opening statement focus groups. Drawing on her experience working with lawyers and conducting virtual focus groups, Elizabeth explains how running a 20-30 minute opening statement session can simplify trial preparation and produce valuable feedback. She highlights the benefits of using virtual focus groups to understand case themes, address specific legal challenges, and improve trial outcomes, citing a $44 million verdict and a $22 million verdict as examples. Elizabeth encourages listeners to join her email list to access an upcoming on-demand course for virtual focus groups.

00:00 Introduction to Virtual Jury Research

01:44 Defining Virtual Jury Research

03:03 Starting with the Opening Statement

04:36 Benefits of Using Opening Statements

06:40 Gathering Feedback and Adjusting

09:53 Real-World Success Stories

12:38 Conclusion and Next Steps

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Supporting Resources:

Join my TLP email list to gain exclusive access to the DIY Virtual Focus Group course and Bonus material:

www.larricklawfirm.com/connect

Episode Credits

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know I sent you.

Episode Transcript

Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. I’m your host, Elizabeth Larrick, and I’m glad you’re joining me today. This episode is going to be for folks who are new to doing virtual jury research, or maybe you’ve tried it out once or twice and you’re kind of unsure of what would be the next step in growing your virtual jury research knowledge.

And so today’s episode is about the easiest place to start if you’re new to virtual jury research. And I wanted to provide this episode because working with lawyers, running my own virtual jury research, I have found sometimes the biggest hurdle is knowing where I can start that’s easy and simple. And so in watching folks do focus groups and helping people run focus groups and mock juries, The easiest place we can start is a place that we know, which is the opening statement.

And I want to take just a quick moment here to clarify, what do I mean when I say virtual jury research? And There are so many options available now online and what I am talking about is when you put together a kind of small group of 8 to 10 to 12 individuals to come together on Zoom or whatever online platform you are using for a few hours.

Maybe it’s 1, 2, 3 hours, maybe it’s even 4 hours. And you’re going to moderate that group yourself, or maybe have somebody else moderate it in your office. And you’re going to really ask questions and get what I would consider qualitative, right? A lot more understanding what’s in their brains about their responses versus what could be compared to data surveys, where there’s going to be hundreds of folks who look at the evidence.

Maybe they listen to something and then they give feedback and you end up getting kind of a large data report. So this is the virtual jury research, which I normally talk about as focus groups, where again, we’re taking a smaller group of people and we’re really talking to them about their thoughts and kind of watching them discuss and deliberate in front of us with guidance through moderation.

And I believe that the solution to getting started if you’ve not done a virtual focus group is to run an opening statement. of 20 to 30 minutes. And again, let me just make sure that we’re coming in on the right and thing, which is most of the time when we come to a virtual focus group or coming to virtual jury research, we are stuck.

We’re having a problem in the case. Maybe we’ve got some challenging liability. We’ve got a, he said, she said, and The opposing counsel is being very obstinate about their point of view and their facts, right? So there’s kind of an impasse. Maybe there’s hard to value damages where it’s a unique set of damages, or maybe there’s some pre existing that makes it a little challenging for causation.

And of course, sometimes we have the other bucket that we hear sometimes about witness credibility and, you know, how is this. Person going to come off to a jury. And so why I believe that an opening statement helps you do this would be that you would create an opening statement that’s around this particular problem, right?

So it’s 20 to 30 minutes. We’re not going to run the whole enchilada here. We’re just going to do maybe the one taco plane. Okay. And that just means we’re going to tackle one issue. Maybe it’s just liability. And this is a very familiar. Virtual focus group that we run and I suggest to people who are new to coming to my focus groups and they’re going to do, you know, their own material.

And the number one reason why is we know how to do this, right? We’re lawyers. We’ve been talking about opening statements. Even if you’ve never done a trial, which is not unusual, by the way, you’re not alone in that camp. Like there’s a lot of talk. There are a lot of books. There’s a lot of guidance.

There’s a lot of examples that you can find. And so this is something that it’s not Something we have to go create that may be difficult for us. For example, when a lawyer tries to put together a neutral narrative, it can be challenging because we are invested. We feel very strongly about our side of the case, so being neutral and creating this neutral narrative can be difficult.

Also other things like cutting deposition clips and just creating a presentation that way, or even visuals, timelines, things that are not necessarily directly in our wheelhouse as lawyers, litigating lawyers. And so that’s why start where we know, which is writing an opening statement. And the other main reason why this is an easy place to start is because we have to do this really no matter what.

we are or where we are for trial preparation, we’re going to have to do an opening statement. And this step of sitting down and making yourself do a 20 to 30 minute opening statement on something very specific. Like I said, liability. Maybe it’s causation really makes you organize your thoughts, put it down, pen to paper.

We talk about that a lot, how important it is to, even at the first pass to write it out because it really gets things on the paper, out of your brain. And then you can really look at cutting things out. Remember 20, 30 minutes really makes us regulate how much information we can give, but also you’re going to put things in your case themes.

You’re going to organize that evidence in the way that you feel strongest about it, which is a great task to do. But also again, that then leads us to our third reason to do an opening statement as your place to start with a virtual focus group. Because it is so easy to understand the feedback, right?

You’re going to get uncomplicated, straightforward feedback about your case, your problem, and your award winning statement. Your case themes, like your evidence, if you think that’s the strongest, right? And so you’re really able to make this process easy on yourself by using the chat, right? So when we run an opening statement virtual focus group, the first 20 to 30 minutes of Is the opening statement and then the group answers very simple questions, like yes, no questions in the chat.

And then you begin the discussion where you just have a very open question. What do you think? And you get everybody’s feedback. And then of course the ponies are out of the gate at this point, right? And they’re all influencing self and it’s easy then to continue to ask questions though about what was confusing.

We heard a piece about how this person said it was a red light, but the other person said it was a green light. What do you all think? Or we heard that the main person who was injured was a passenger and they weren’t paying attention to what was right. Is that a problem? Okay, so there’s lots of easy ways to ask direct questions about your problems and get that feedback.

And of course, you know, the main question that we normally always have as lawyers is what am I missing? Where are the blind spots and what facts do you want to hear or know about that would help you make a decision? And so again, really simple set up one. We know, right? We write opening statements. We’re already organizing things in our brain about where we think the strongest themes are strongest claims and our evidence.

And then this just makes us put pen to paper and really organize it and again make the cut here. We’re going to have lots of information more than that fits in 30 minutes. Making you sit down and squeeze it into that 20 30 minutes really makes you analyze what is the best. and how to sequence it. And then of course, we want to start in a easy place that we can understand what feedback we’re getting.

It’s uncomplicated. Okay. And that’s why I love suggesting that lawyers who are new or lawyers who have maybe tried virtual focus groups and they want to take it to the next step, or they’re not really unsure what would be the next focus group to do an opening statement focus group, virtual focus group.

Um, is an excellent place to get started and feel successful. And that’s the thing too, is doing an opening statement leans into where we naturally are in a case. It leans into our advocacy. It’s okay to be an advocate in this situation. And of course, the flip on that is just make sure that a different person is asking questions, right?

Especially You know, it’s very hard to kind of flip faces in a focus group where you’re being a total advocate and then you flip to try to be neutral and ask questions. Just have somebody else come in and ask the questions. And again, you could write the questions out for your staff to basically just ask the questions and nothing else.

And still you’d be able to get that easy feedback. Understand, you know, did my theme hit or did not hit? Was this the best evidence or do they want to see something else? And, you know, the two main examples that I have are, you know, in the very beginning of the pandemic had a case here in Austin that was going to be one of the first virtual and so got together and really looked at, you know, How can we make this complicated case about a fiduciary duty simple?

And so they were very streamlined. The lawyers wanted to do just opening statements and we did three virtual focus groups just with opening statements. And by the time the case got to trial, they were actually able to do in person. However, they felt really strongly, very comfortable, very confident that their opening statement was basically going to nail the case down clearly.

Quickly and simply, and there’s no way that the defense would ever be able to come back. I think that’s absolutely true. They end up getting a 44 million dollar verdict in that case. And additionally, recently, and this will be upcoming on the podcast soon, my guest spot with Michelle Gessner talking about her case against Wells Fargo, where she again used virtual focus groups.

And using her opening statement, many, you know, over and over again, at least I think four or five times. Again, just tweaking it. And again, that’s another follow up with an easy, the next easiest one to do is to tweak that opening and come back, but her redoing her opening statement, uh, many times, and she talks about this in our episode together about how it really helped her one, understand her fame and her evidence, but allowed her to pivot.

Because she had done it so many times, she knew where the jury was, but she was able to pivot if she’d gotten objections, which of course she did in her opening statement. Uh, but that case turned out in a 22 million verdict. So, you know, the proof is in the pudding. This is the easiest one, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not going to get the best outcomes.

You are going to get simple, understandable feedback here. So, Here is the theme, which is it doesn’t have to be complicated. We tend to overcomplicate things as lawyers, but I really, you know, the strive in this focus group to make. I strive in this podcast to make it easy and simple to encourage you to start using virtual focus groups.

You think about this as jury research to help you make decisions in your case, get the feedback that’s clear and understandable to really help and ease your trial preparation burden earlier than that 30 day mark before and get some significant help so you can sleep better at night. Right. And that’s where this opening statement focus group comes in to really get your brain to organize everything, put it on paper, and then be able to feel confident in moving forward.

So I hope that this easy place to start our opening statement virtual focus groups will help you get started if you haven’t, or give you an idea for your next virtual focus group in a case that may be stumping you. All right. Thank you again so much for tuning in. I want to encourage everybody who is listening to join the email list.

The link will be in the show notes and specifically because right now I am going to be launching my on demand course for do it yourself virtual focus group, but I’m only launching it to my email list. And because I love my email list and my loyal I’m Folks over there, there’s going to be a bonus that is just going to be exclusive to the email list.

So check the show notes. It is www. larricklawfirm. com slash connect. If you are not able to check those show notes, get signed up and then you will learn very shortly about what is happening with that on demand course. All right. Thank you so much.

Depositions can be a big drag on case expenses! This episode is here to expand your toolkit and improve your legal practice with our guest, Karl Seelbach, co-founder of Skribe. 

Learn how Karl is transforming the legal field with Skribe, a tool to host virtual depositions and easily manage video depositions. Hear about the challenges that led to Skribe’s creation and how it is addressing common pain points like shortage of court reporters, high costs, and delays. Explore the evolving landscape of legal depositions and the features of Skribe’s AI-powered tools. Karl discusses the benefits and limitations of remote depositions, the issue of stenographer shortages, and how Skribe’s software offers a practical alternative.

In this episode, you will hear:

• Skribe’s creation to address deposition challenges
• The benefits of remote depositions
• The impact of AI-powered tools on deposition management
• Advice for integrating technology in legal practices

Follow and Review:

We’d love for you to follow us if you haven’t yet. Click that purple ‘+’ in the top right corner of your Apple Podcasts app. We’d love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast.

Supporting Resources:

If you would like to learn more about Skribe, you can email Karl with your questions: karl@skribe.com or visit https://skribe.ai/

Get results, spend less money. Check out https://skribe.ai/ for your deposition needs and remember to mention the Trial Lawyer Prep podcast!

Don’t miss an episode of Trial Lawyer Prep by subscribing to the newsletter here: https://larricklawfirm.com/connect/

The newsletter is the place Elizabeth share’s tips and strategies, PLUS exclusive offers.

Episode Credits

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know I sent you.

Check out the Video

Episode Transcript

Hello, and welcome back to the podcast trial lawyer prep. I am your host, Elizabeth Larrick, and I am excited for my guest today. He is making history in this podcast today. He is coming in as a defense lawyer, but let me tell you y’all, he has a very [00:01:00] clever and amazingly helpful tool.

He’s going to talk to us about so, but before we jump in, I let me introduce my guest, Karl Seelbach. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

Karl: Well, thank you very much, Elizabeth, for having me on. And I really like how you set the bar very low for me by introducing me as a personal injury defense lawyer. Probably has strong opinions, or at least maybe low expectations for for this episode.

So to go but up from here.

Elizabeth: Well, that’s true. Although, you know, that’s how we met. So we met doing a case against one another. And it’s been a Several years. I think you were with a different firm and you guys went out on your own and that’s awesome. And then now you’ve created this other really cool product that we’re going to talk about, but I want to give you a little shot, a little time to kind of tell, tell us a little bit about yourself.

I know you’re in Austin, just like I am. So, you know, tell, tell the group a little bit about kind of what you do and what brought you to this podcast.

Karl: Yeah. So I haven’t always been [00:02:00] a personal injury defense attorney. I often joke that I’m actually a plaintiff’s lawyer trapped in a defense firm. I went to law school to be a plaintiff personal injury lawyer.

That’s kind of what I thought I wanted to do and what I kind of aspired to do. I grew up kind of surrounded by plaintiff personal injury attorneys. My dad does safety expert witness work, and I met a lot of trial lawyers growing up in Henderson, Texas, who I respected and still respect. And who that was kind of my first exposure to law.

So anyway, since then, Yeah, I went to law school, ultimately started at a big firm, Winstead, a big general purpose defense firm doing all sorts of things, everything from finance and banking litigation to appellate litigation, some types of litigation that I found extremely boring, and then finally got a taste of personal injury work on the defense side.

And I just kind of thought, yeah, this is really where I’m meant to be, like the personal injury field in general. And so started doing more and more personal injury [00:03:00] and decided with a good friend of mine named Trek Doyle after, uh, about, I guess, 7 or 8 years of working with him to launch our own firm, which we did in 2015 and we actually did a fair amount of plaintiff’s personal injury work, which I think I can say this in hindsight now.

Um, every defense lawyer I think would be very well served to do some plaintiff’s work. I really think you, you get a real respect and a little bit of education of what that side of the V has to go through. One of the main things that I took away from it is when you’re the plaintiff’s lawyer on the case, You’re not just the attorney on the case.

You are the plaintiff’s counselor. You’re helping facilitate medical treatment. You’re, you know, potentially helping them figure out how in the heck they’re going to make ends meet while at work and they have all these. So I think going through that process of handling those cases really helped me better understand some of the dynamics that perhaps some of your listeners, you know, have to [00:04:00] deal with on a, on a day to day case to case basis.

And then you decided I don’t want to do anymore. Well, I decided to, so it was kind of interesting the way it happened. And I, and I really do sometimes feel like a plaintiff’s lawyer trapped at my own defense firm. Cause you know, I’m one of the founders. We had a lot of prior relationships from being at Winstead and also a lot of hooks in the water with, large companies, insurance, as well as some insurance companies, third party administrators.

And when we started our firm at first, you know, some of those relationships weren’t turning into work, but there’s a lot of hooks in the water, so to speak. And eventually, one after the other, after the other started coming in with, Hey, we’d like to retain you to represent this company or we’d like you to defend this employer.

And I think it’s extremely difficult to kind of ride the fence and represent both injured plaintiffs and defendants. It’s not impossible. There are some firms that do it. They tend to be really small firms or maybe [00:05:00] solos. I think it’s really hard. And it just felt to me that we needed to pick one. And the one that for me was the best business fit was helping these employers in particular defend against a workplace injury claim.

So in Texas, as you know, And some of your listeners probably know as well. You don’t have to have workers comp. And if you make that trade off and you don’t have it, you expose your company to negligence claims in state court or federal court. And so we defend a lot of those household name companies, fortune 500 companies when they get sued on personal injury cases in Texas and go up against a lot of great lawyers.

Also great, but most of the ones we go up against, I have a ton of respect for and really enjoy working with cases with them.

Elizabeth: Awesome. I appreciate the background and letting us know. And you know, it is true that when I was interning during law school at a defense firm, like they had one person because you have to really seal everything off and only one person was was allowed to do any plaintiff’s personally to work everybody else to defense.

So [00:06:00] that makes sense. And again, you kind of got to, uh, Pick your poison and go with it, whether it be plaintiffs or defense work, but we’re here to talk about this other super cool tool that you’ve created. So tell us about Skribe and what it is.

Karl: Well, so I’ll tell you about the inspiration for it first. So I’ve taken and defended hundreds of depositions in my career.

And one of the things that a couple of takeaways from that one is you should video all of your depositions. And if you’re not, you’re doing yourself a disservice. You’re doing the case of disservice. The reasons for that are there’s a lot of good reasons for it. But one is video is the most powerful form of evidence in a case.

And I truly believe that not only do juries expect to see it, but I think judges actually enjoy seeing it. No one wants to see a witness or a fake witness, for example. And what I mean by that is someone just get up and read a deposition transcript because a witness isn’t available. So we’re literally reading questions and answers, which believe it or not still happens [00:07:00] versus playing the video of the actual witness.

So it really helps inform everything from Demand letters during the case as it’s going on to be able to put video clips in your demand to kind of bolster it on the defense side. You know, I use the video in reporting to my client. So, as I was handling all these depositions and videoing them, I was kind of like, I found myself in this problem of not having a really easy and simple way to create video clips and share those clips, whether I wanted to share it with the court or with my client or in a response letter to opposing counsel’s demand.

And so one of the inspirations for Skribe was making it super simple to create and share video evidence, primarily testimony or other forms of video evidence, body cam videos. Recorded statements, whatever it may be. So it’s one of the things that kind of inspired me to start Skribe was that problem. The other piece of it was, I started realizing just how much money my clients were spending [00:08:00] on depositions.

And. Particularly realize that pain point when I started doing plunge cases where I was the one fronting, you know, the bill, so to speak, and paying those court reporting fees and those videographer fees, and I thought to myself, kind of got to be a better way to do this, like, surely we can use technology to speed up and simplify and reduce the cost to take a deposition to capture legal testimony.

So that was the 2nd reason was really cost. And then the 3rd was. You know, I’d go sit in all these depositions and I’d find myself and my team is, you know, we’ve grown now, we’ve got 15 attorneys at my firm. I found this common problem of, okay, when was that deposition taken? Why don’t we have the transcript yet?

You know, where is the video? Like, why am I still having to track down things weeks or maybe sometimes a month or more later that I can then go through it and clip it or whatever I need to do with it? And, you know, I kind of thought to myself. Not only do I think we can [00:09:00] solve the cost problem, we ought to be able to serve up a copy of the record synced to a transcript the same day a deposition takes place.

I mean, there’s no reason with today’s software that we shouldn’t be able to do that. So those are the things that my own frustrations with the process that led to the founding of Skribe. I mean, so I know technically when it’s Skribe When did it come out of the closet? When did it officially launch?

Because that was another thing I was really curious about. Sure. Sure. So the company was founded about two years ago. The first year was a lot of discovery work, due diligence, development work. We actually launched the product itself and I’ll get into kind of what the product is and what it does in just a second last year.

So it’s been about a year to a year and a half. I don’t remember the exact date off the top of my head, but I guess it’s been a roughly 18 months since we launched the product. And so there’s 22 products. Currently with Skribe, we have Skribe live, which is for capturing live testimony, such as depositions.

And then we have Skribe [00:10:00] library, which is a way to upload any audio or video file you have in your case and get a transcript and be able to search it and clip it and easily share those clips. Thanks. So those are kind of the two sides to the house. They’re very complimentary. You know, anytime you take a live event, it ends up in your library.

But, but, you know, my firm uses it. We have, I think, at this point, over 200 firms that have used it. We’ve done over almost 1000 depositions over the last year and a half. So it’s, it’s beginning to take off. And it’s really cool to see some of the feedback that we get that kind of validates. The problem that I was experiencing and that people, you know, that it resonates that people are they’re tired of spending too much money.

They’re tired of waiting on a copy of the record. They’re realizing that there are really awesome things that that software and technology allow us to do, such as creating video clips just by highlighting text. Putting those clips and demand letters to make them more persuasive or briefs to make them more compelling.[00:11:00]

And that’s really just tip of the iceberg. We have some other really cool features that we just launched recently that we can talk about in a minute. But yeah, I mean, it’s kind of off to the races. I mean, it’s a lot of fun. Yeah, and the reason why I was because I knew it was after, you know, kind of the pandemic and and and lawyers having to every lawyer having to use zoom no matter what to do hearings and whatnot.

And like, I know that. Thinking through like adoption of technology and lawyers. It’s like oil and vinegar. It’s really, really, you got to force us to really do that. And so like, you know, the almost like, you know, precipitous timing of Skribe and how many people realizing like, wow. And then. Also the cost, right?

The court reporter costs, the videographer costs. And, and I just remember in the, like, right when, you know, we had the shutdown and I was on a representative on, on a group for Travis County trying to figure out how do we keep trials going and. You know, we had all these ideas and, and one of the things, you know, the court reporters were like, wait a second, what about [00:12:00] us?

Because, you know, eliminating that person to person, you know, really was a struggle for them. And of course, many of the ideas just really weren’t going to work for anybody. And luckily we did, you know, there was zoom trial, there was some zoom trials that came along after that. So, you know, you guys obviously.

200 folks and growing. And I think that’s amazing. I, you know, I loved that when I went to website and visited, like, you’ve got a lot of awesome resources, but I just, you know, having the twofold, having the library, because there are still a lot of folks who need that technology that took those depots before, right?

I mean, cases are so backlogged. They can upload that stuff, have it sink to cut those clips and make life so much easier when you’re getting ready for trial. And then obviously. starting your depots now with Skribe to make it easier for, you know, and cheaper to do that. So tell us a little bit about, I mean, you know, kind of talked about the problems it’s solving, you know, what’s the feedback you’re getting, you know, what, what’s the pushback that you get to?

Yeah. [00:13:00] So, Well, you hit on a couple of things that I’m going to come back to, but I’ll answer your question first. The pushback is really one that is more education related, and that’s the concept of not all attorneys realize that non stenographic depositions are permitted in most states, not all. In Texas, in federal court, in over 40 states, non stenographic depositions are permitted.

Most of them are by rule. There are some that require stipulation, but Texas federal court as well as, you know, I think it’s over 30. It’s permitted by the rules. So, you know, there’s an education components to this because sometimes the knee jerk reaction is what do you mean? You’re going to use. Skribes have record this through zoom and there’s not going to be a court reporter.

How does that work? And so we kind of have to explain here’s the legal rules and why it’s permissible. And we have material that we can share with and we do share with all of our customers on that that explained. It’s been around for a long time. It’s actually been around since the nineties and historically, if you think back to depositions being [00:14:00] recorded, either with an old school video camera only sometimes or over the phone, even, but it just hasn’t been utilized as much because, um, Again, pre covid these depositions were in person.

You kind of needed someone to either type it or set up video equipment to record it. Now we can use modern software and computers to do some of that for us. You know, the other piece of this is in addition to educating not only our customers, but sometimes the opposing counsel on why this is permitted.

We also have to educate them on well, how does it actually work? And so that’s where we get into. Look, this is not a problem. Generative AI. It’s not just making up words that it thinks someone said. We are video and audio recording the testimony. There is a certified notary supervising the entire process end to end.

There’s redundant recording to make sure that there’s A backup copy of all the audio and the video in case one of the recordings were to fail, which knock on wood hasn’t actually happened. But there’s [00:15:00] redundancy baked into the process. And then we’re using proven ASR automated speech recognition to generate the rough transcript that is available within about an hour to two of the deposition.

And then within five days that gets human proofread and verified and legally formatted so that. The same week, no rush fee, no extra cost. The same week, you actually get a accurate final transcript that looks just like the transcripts you’re used to seeing, but you can file with the court if you need it.

So I think a big part of it is education. The other piece of it is You touched on which was coded and kind of how that shifted the market. I don’t think we would be having this conversation if Covid had not happened because, you know, against the way we’re approaching this market is with a remote first approach for purposes of hosting live events.

And that’s what enables us to provide this solution to attorneys because everybody has a laptop in front [00:16:00] of them. We can isolate for the most part, the audio to each participant and we’re able to capture a quality recording that we can then generate a transcript off of and proofread that transcript.

So it’s, you know. There’s a lot of bad things that came with COVID for sure, but I do think that the legal industry as a whole has gotten a lot more efficient as a result of COVID. And I actually believe, and I think we’re seeing firsthand, that attorneys are more willing to try new things and adopt new technology as a result of COVID.

Now I will say, Not every single deposition in the entire legal industry is right for zoom. Not everyone maybe is right for non stenographic. There is a place for stenographers in our legal industry and there’s absolutely cases where in person depositions do make sense. We just believe that that’s in a minority of cases that the vast majority, 70 to 80%, maybe as high as 90 percent are just fine over zoom and that the benefits, the efficiencies that you get [00:17:00] far outweigh, you know, what people think they get from that in person experience.

Absolutely. And of course, you know, I think a lot of my focus groups are virtual. So I am totally with you on like, you know, sometimes there is a barrier to what this must be done in person. And it’s like, well, it doesn’t. And I mean, it’s, uh, you’ve been on the other side too, to know, like, yeah, if you want to go take the other driver and they’re in Austin to go for it.

But what about those experts that are in California and New York and Washington? It’s wow. You end up You know, paying for time, but then also just that travel and the extra stuff. And plus, I was going to say the other thing I think that was, is we just have a real big shortage of core reporters. Yeah.

Yeah. I actually talked to note to not forget to mention that you on the timing, the timing was important because of COVID. There also is a legitimate shortage of court reporters, and it’s getting worse, not better. Now, you know, the size of the shortage is probably [00:18:00] up for debate. You know, the N. C. R. A.

National Corporate Association had reported it to be, I think, 7 to 8000 short court reporters based on demand. You know, there’s been rumblings. Well, maybe that was overestimated. The point is, young people, people in their twenties and maybe thirties aren’t going to stenography school at the rate that they used to, even though the number of claims, the number of litigated files continues to go up.

So, you know, it is absolutely a classic supply and demand problem, and it’s only going to get worse, which means. We need alternative solutions, which is where a software driven solution like Skribe can help solve that and help provide a cost effective alternative to the market. And, you know, I think that the other thing that it brings that I see particularly as a business owner.

So if any of your listeners, you know, or law firm owners or kind of equity partners, you realize that this, that speed is important, right? That the faster you turn [00:19:00] cases At your firm, the more cases your team can handle. Now, obviously you want to do it with quality, right? You don’t want to just rush through it just to rush through it, but every delay adds up, right?

So if you’re waiting a month or three or four weeks just to get a copy of this transcript, or you have to pay double or triple to get it faster, that has a cumulative effect either in cost to get a rush copy or in time waiting on, you know, this you to get a copy of this transcript so that you can move on to whatever the next step is, whether it’s emotion, whether it’s the next deposition.

So I think, you know, the way we look at it, skribe is speed is not just important, it’s a requirement. And so we put that kind of at the top of what we do. And a lot of attorneys that have that have joined and not just the attorneys, the paralegals, the other legal support staff members, they appreciate that with skribe, they don’t have to wait.

They don’t have to ask where’s the transcript or when will I get this? You You get it the same [00:20:00] day. And so you’re able to quit. We had one attorney actually San Antonio personal injury attorney, a great lawyer. I’ve had cases against him. He took a deposition with Skribe in the morning of a witness and then had another one that afternoon.

Well, during the afternoon deposition, he used video clips that he created. from the morning deposition and the defense lawyers, their mind was blown. They were like, we don’t under like, how did you do that? How did you get it that fast? But, you know, literally that is possible with Skribe. You get it that fast that you could take a deposition in the morning and over the lunch break, you know, start to chop it up, process it.

And, and later that same day use clips from the deposition and the next one, you know, that may not be something you need to do all the time, but it’s nice to have that option. Well, sure. And I think, I mean, I’m imagining a disputed liability situation where it’s like, these are the two key witnesses and they’re going back to back.

And like, at the time you think, Ooh, great, we’re going to knock this all out. But then you don’t think, [00:21:00] Ooh, well, you know, how do I then like, really, if there’s a problem, you know, solve it with being able to show them, Hey, here’s what the other person said. And this obviously solves that problem. Being able to say, Hey, literally this is what they said, but like, watch the video.

This is how they said it, you know? Yes, how they said it. That’s exactly right. What’s the body language? What’s the tone? What’s the look on their face? I mean, those are things that are not only important for attorneys to know and understand. Those are important things for us to be able to convey to our clients to show our experts, you know, for what you do to show focus, right?

Skribe enables, and we’ve had some of our attorneys use it for this purpose. Historically, video was underutilized. Why? Well, it’s the frustration I was telling you about earlier. It’s because historically video has been a pain in the you know what to work with. Difficult to chop up unless you took the time and effort to train on some movie maker software or video editing software or [00:22:00] you had some, you know, computer nerd in your office who could chop it up for you or you outsourced it and paid someone else to do it.

All of which slows you down. And I think by making videos so simple to clip and share, like if you can, to your listeners, if you can highlight a PDF, you can create a video clip with Skribe. If you know how to copy and paste a website address, you can share that clip with Skribe. So it really is just super, super simple.

And the 1 thing that I, that I do want to emphasize that we haven’t talked about yet. Step one was making it easier to capture testimony, share the video clips, and we’ve done that, and we’re growing that, and that continues to be a big focus of ours. How can we do that better? Step two, though, is we want to help legal professionals analyze that testimony.

And so we just launched An AI powered chat and analysis tool where you can go into a deposition, whether you took it with Skribe or you took it with someone else and you just uploaded the video into your Skribe account. Either [00:23:00] way, you can then query that transcript and ask it any question you want to ask it.

What did the witness say about topic X? How did the witness perform? How do you think they play to a jury? Based on this testimony draft sample discovery that I should send to the other party on the following issues or what you think are the top five issues and the A. I. will analyze the transcript and within seconds not only give you an answer, but the answer includes sourced video clips.

So, if I ask the chat bot. How did the witness deSkribe the injuries that they suffered as a result of this accident and how it’s impacted their life? Rather than me having to go search through the transcript, it’s going to summarize what the witness said on those two issues, and it’s going to create video clips.

Witness explains can no longer go bowling or play with their kids or whatever it may be. So I can see the summary and click the video to watch where the witness actually [00:24:00] testified about this topic. So we actually just launched that just two weeks ago and are just starting to get feedback on it. I’ve actually used it in my firm for about the last month.

And it’s just such a time saver. I think it’s good. I really believe that that feature alone is going to be the dominant way that attorneys search their depositions. I mean, like, forget keyword search, forget, you know, the indexes at the back that we used to use of the P. D. F. Or the printed, you know, binder copy.

You can now find exactly what you need just by asking the software, and it’s going to pull it up, summarize it, and give you a clip of the corresponding segment. And so for folks like wondering, okay, well, is this, you know, and I, I feel kind of fancy because I just learned this, is it in the silo by itself?

You know, like nobody else, you know, unlike if you go to Google Gemini or ask, you know, I’m going to say Ask Jeeves, but [00:25:00] that’s, you know, ago, Elizabeth. That’s no it in? Like you got, you It’s in my repository or it stays there. It doesn’t actually have access to anything inside the internet to pull an answer for you.

So there’s a couple of parts to your question. So I’ll answer the first part of your question first, which is, I think more data privacy focus. If I was understand where you were getting at, we do not use anything that is submitted to Skribe to train large language models or to train, you know, some other law firms like customized model.

So we’re not, in other words, we’re not using. Questions that are submitted to or data that submitted to train the AI. It’s it is, um, the models already been trained and we’re not using fresh data to train the model. And then the 2nd part of your question. I’ve admittedly forgotten it’s in a silo, meaning like there, you know, it, [00:26:00] the.

is in there. My depositi then me, you know, it’s i I like if I go to google going to take anything I it’s nothing, none of tha Okay, I read your question Well, you used it correctly, but I was thinking I’ll explain what I was thinking. Just second. The answer to your question is Your data is not shared with anyone else.

The data that you submit isn’t used to benefit or provide access to some other firm. Like, in other words, if you submit a deposition transcript of some expert witness or something that is extremely confidential, you don’t have to worry about that showing up in your report. in some other firms answer when they chat with some transcript, even if it’s the same expert, right?

It doesn’t become a part of the source material for the large language model. So hopefully that answers your question. Now, one thing that we do plan to do in the future, we don’t have this yet, but in the future, we do plan to offer custom law firm models to where you [00:27:00] could begin to train your own law firms model and feed it more and more and more data.

So that you can get silo just for your firm customized answers. And so, you know, step one is to get something useful in users hands, see what they like. What did they not like? One thing that our team at Skribe does a great job of is listening to customers. So, you know, if some of your listeners want to test this, let me know.

I can get them set up to test it. and let us know what do you like? What’s missing? You know, what do you wish was a little bit different or better? Or, you know, does it solve your need? I know, you know, it solves a lot of mine, but every attorney has kind of a different wish list of the things that they like or that they want to see.

Some of the things that are on the road map are the ability to search across the entire case, So to be able to basically figure out, like, for example, you know, did this witness testify in a way that’s consistent with these other witnesses and have the analyze across multiple transcripts and [00:28:00] spot either consistencies or inconsistencies or things like that.

So. You know, a big part of Skribe’s mission is to, to really change and modernize again, not only how we capture and share testimony, but also how we analyze it. So we’re looking at all the different ways that we as a company can help attorneys and their teams do a better job at taking the depositions, do a better job at analyzing those depositions and hopefully do it at a lower cost than what they’ve been paying the last, you know, 10 years because the price to take a deposition in the old fashioned way really has gotten super expensive.

Yeah, it’s extremely cost prohibitive. If you are running a solo to small size firm, I mean, it’s really difficult, especially like some of the costs for all the stuff and. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I think Skribe definitely solves, you know, an efficiency, you know, a cost perspective, but also I think a lot of people, I think you’d be surprised how many people still do not videotape depositions.

And I’m in, I’m in the camp with you. [00:29:00] I mean, I learned very early on videotape everything, and this really gives. actually an opportunity for solo small firms to video everything via zoom. So let me ask you a look because sometimes this happens and this may have may not have happened to you before, but I’ve seen some video clips where you may have a witness who, you know, they are using their iPhone and they’re in a car doing a deposition.

You know, The video technology. Is it just kind of like, Hey, whoever shows up and how they show up, you’re just kind of stuck with that? Or is there any way to really kind of modify that? Yeah, so it’s a great question. So two parts of that one, we’re not, we’re not as a software company going to modify anything that’s recorded.

So, you know, we’re going to be preserved, not only preserving and saving. We also certify like through an affidavit. the authenticity of the non stenographic record, which is the recording in any digital exhibits. Now, the first part of that is more of a threshold issue. What is an acceptable level of quality in [00:30:00] audio and video?

And we do have standards. And that’s one of the reasons that right now we have, we call them liaisons, the certified notaries that help facilitate the event end to end. They have standards that they follow to make sure that the Uh, the people that need to be on camera, on camera, that the witness is framed, that the audio quality is strong and will interrupt politely if there is a problem along the way, if someone’s audio connection drops or their video feed drops or staggers, you know, no technology is perfect.

No human is perfect, right? I mean, like I get stenographer transcripts are used to when we were using more traditional core reporting methods that did have mistakes in them. From time to time, I would say more often than not, I would find some type of mistake. Now, sometimes it wasn’t a big deal.

Occasionally, it was a big deal. The nice thing about doing non stenographic depositions is you have the audio and video. So that’s kind of the source of truth. That’s one of the big reasons. I’m such a fan of the video. Not only does it convey the [00:31:00] tone, the look on the face, that all those other things that maybe you don’t get from from the text on the page.

But it’s also the source of truth. Like if there’s a dispute about what a transcript says, we’ll just play back the video. So I think it’s, you know, it’s a great solution. There’s no perfect solution. There’s pros and cons with with everything. There’s trade offs. But I really do believe that The future of how we capture testimony and analyze it is going to be software powered.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be a human component against and our first absolutely have a place in the industry. Proofreading by human absolutely has a place in the industry, but. What we’re seeing through real users is the quality of the rough A. I. Transcript has gotten so high that you can get the substance, analyze it, clip it, share it, do all the things that you really need to do to move the case from point A to point B.

without ever even looking at the final transcript and really only [00:32:00] use the final transcript. If you need to file something with the court or if the case is actually going to trial and it’s time to start doing your page in line video cuts and page in line designations. I just want to echo something you said because This is a huge like fear point for a lot of lawyers because all I do almost all we do a virtual focus groups we have some is and that is like like using technology so the ability that what you I just want to echo it because you Skribe provides a person who will help you with your setup your witnesses setup and make sure that they sound clear like that is amazing that is such a huge bonus point because I know there are lots of times Cause I, we all had to kind of start using, you know, notaries on zoom and they just get in there and get out, like they don’t help you.

Like, so that is a huge bonus to have someone, if you are worried as a lawyer, cause sometimes we forget, oh my gosh, share screen or things like that. And [00:33:00] so having somebody else in the room was always going to be there to help with, you know, and make it so the lighting is right in this, in the square, That is so helpful, especially you don’t necessarily always want to be that person who says, Hey, witness who you don’t know, but I’m a lawyer.

Like I need you to turn the light on in front of you where, you know, it makes it a little bit easier for the lawyer to have that off their shoulders. Yeah. And we should like the competent Skribe tries to be very Customer focused and friendly and how we handle those issues. Like, for example, if this were a deposition and our audio and video connection kept going in and out and in and out the way we handle it is we just offer to reschedule at no cost.

Like, look, do we need to figure out a different day? Or does someone need to drive to a different location to get a stronger Internet signal? I mean, we really want to make sure that the clients and the clients being the scheduling attorney. and the opposing attorney have a good experience with Skribe, get a quality recording and ultimately see the benefits [00:34:00] of our solution that we offer.

Not only speed, not only the cost savings, but some of the other things that we talked about that will help them analyze and use the You know, their video in ways that maybe they don’t even imagine. I mean, you know, I remember the first time I filed something actually was a mediation position statement and I had sent this mediation position statement and there were quite a bit of deposition testimony in this case that was pretty critical and I’d put video clips into the letter into the word document and we’ve got tutorials on how to do that.

It really is simple. It takes seconds, but I had it. Pulled up Microsoft Word on one side of my monitor, the Skribe app on the other side of the monitor, and created these clips, and I remember showing up to mediation, and the mediator was just like, what out in the world did you do that? I’ve never seen, like, that was so helpful for me to be able to actually watch the witnesses testify about the key issues in the case.

You know, not only did I get the substance, but I was able to gauge my perception of their credibility, how they [00:35:00] present it, how they might present to a jury. And so it’s kind of like, I’m a techie. So I always, you know, I’ve used technology for so long. You start to take certain things for granted, but I do have to remind myself as well as the Skribe team from time to time that a lot of people have never done this.

They’ve never seen it, you know, video used this way. They’ve never, maybe they’ve never even used AI chat in their business life at all, like to analyze anything, much less a deposition transcript. So, yeah, that kind of goes back to the education component of this. And 1 thing that we offer is webinars for any law firms, like, we’ll come in and typically it’s a zoom based webinar where we will explain how the software works, the ways that you can leverage it in your practice.

And we even have some CLE accredited webinars as well, where you can get some credit, even, I think one of them even has ethics credit too. So it’s a lot of fun. Well, I know that, you know, the website itself and we’ll put like links in the show notes and all that good stuff has so [00:36:00] much good information on it.

So if somebody wanted to get started, like, what’s the best way to get started? If they’re still curious, like, tell us a little bit about that. Yeah. So two very easy options. So one, you could literally just go to the website, which is Skribe s k r I b e dot a I. And you could click schedule now at the top of the page and fill out the information with your email, the date of your depo and the name of your witness.

And that would Can I kick off an email to our support team and get you in the hopper? So to speak, the other option is they can email me. I’m happy to take an email and, you know, kind of do a handheld introduction to our team. My email is Karl also with a K at Skribe. ai. So either one, if they mentioned your show, we’re happy to provide a discount as well for their.

First deposition or their first upload if they want to just upload existing video, whether it’s a deposition or some other type of video, they’re welcome to kick the tires that way and we’ll provide a [00:37:00] discount to any of your listeners on their first Skribe usage. But I will say that I think that 1 thing that you mentioned that I want to maybe mention to your listeners is attorneys who aren’t videoing their depositions.

I completely understand the pain point of you signed up for a deposition with court reporting company A B, whoever they are, and you’re annoyed or frustrated that to get a video copy of the deposition, you can’t just press record. On the zoom or the court reporter won’t just press the record button on the zoom and that they want to charge you an additional substantial fee to have a videographer sit in and just press the record button on the zoom.

In addition to sending a court reporter to sit there and type the transcript and really that is 1 of the other frustrations that led to the founding of Skribe. That exact scenario happened to me about 3 years ago where a court reporter. She was very nice. [00:38:00] It wasn’t her fault. She was just the worker bee that had been sent to type the transcript.

I asked her if she could press record on this, this expert witness doctor deposition. And she just said, well, they won’t let me do that. You know, and I don’t see that a videographer signed up to be here today. Anyway, long story short, there’d been a miscommunication and you know, they were going to have to reschedule the deposition, pay a rescheduling fee.

And I finally just got fed up and I was working with a plaintiff’s firm out of Houston and they were very cooperative. And I said, why don’t we just hop on my zoom line? I’ll record it and I’ll share a video with you, me, and I’ll share a copy with the court reporter. And so we did that. And the very next day, I picked up the phone and called my co founder at Skribe, Tom Irby and said, okay, it’s time to start this company.

Like, this is, this is BS. There has to be a better way. Yeah, that is, I mean, so many, that, that particular irritation is really one of the things that I think has just really gotten out of hand with You know, [00:39:00] got just the cost of pursuing a case and then having, like, just this little nickel and dime. Oh, well, you can’t push the button, like, really, you know, turned a lot of people off.

And again, you know, like you said, there’s totally a place for court reporters. But some of those practices that have been happening after the pandemic was just like, oh, wow. Oh, you know, so I’m glad that you brought up that pain point because I know a lot of people listening. I’ve had that had that exact feeling of like, wait, what?

I can’t just push this little button here. Like, The other practice, this is just some pre advice to your plaintiff lawyer listeners. And this is not the goal here is not to necessarily intentionally compliment what you do or kind of feed you more work. But one of the things that I tell plaintiff’s lawyers is I get these demand letters, right?

And I had, you know, my team has a lot of cases were sifting through these, these settlement demand letters that, you know, have big numbers in them. And, One of the things that I truly do believe genuinely is [00:40:00] underutilized is two pieces of advice I’ll give your listeners. One, putting data in your settlement demand to help justify your numbers.

You can get the information. Go do a verdict search on a verdict search tool and get some sample jury verdicts or, you know, if you have access to, you know, sample arbitrator awards, whether that’s through or some other listserv that you can get some examples, you know, maybe redacted with party names, but some examples of what some arbitrators have done in similar cases.

or jury verdicts or bench trials. That really does help when a defense lawyer has to go in and justify their ask as to why am I recommending this settlement range. It’s not just numbers that have been thrown into a demand letter. The plaintiff’s lawyer has actually spent the time and trouble of putting some data into their demand.

We may not agree with it. We may find some other examples that are more favorable to our side, but at least it’s real numbers. And then the other piece of advice [00:41:00] I would give your listeners is not every single case across your entire docket. Probably merits doing a focus group or study group, but there’s a lot of them that do.

And it’s amazing like what you can do if you take modern technology, like some of the tools we’ve talked about today and create a highlight reel of look, we’ve now taken 5, 10, 15 depositions, whatever, whatever. Create a highlight reel of all those key testimony of the key moments, put that together along with kind of, you know, an opening closing, whatever else you want to do and get it in front of some people in the real world and see what they think.

And, you know, you may get some gems from that and that you can then use and put in your demand letter and say, Hey, we have focus group this case and Look, here is why we’re demanding X million or whatever it may be. We’re not just making this number up or pulling it out of thin air. We have gone to the trouble of actually pulling [00:42:00] verdict samples.

We’ve gone to the trouble of doing a focus group. And here is the feedback that we’ve got. And I think if, you know, attorneys would roll up their sleeves and do that work, they’ll be surprised at some of the results. I really believe they’ll get, you know, higher settlements as a result if they do that instead of just, you know, again, not all attorneys do this, but I get so many demands that are just fluff, fluff, fluff, you know, super inflated medicals without any, they come across as detached from reality.

And it makes it difficult for me to do my job if I don’t have some concrete examples or, you know, some focus group feedback, something that I can go to my. whether it’s an in house council or a risk manager or a third party administrator, whoever it is that I’m reporting to and say, here’s what they’re going to present.

And here’s kind of where they’re coming from. And here’s the work that they put in to get there. So anyway, I just wanted to share that with you. I’ve gone on a couple of other Podcasts where the audience tends to be [00:43:00] plaintiff’s lawyers. And selfishly, part of the reason that I offer that advice is it makes my job easier as a defense lawyer, when I have to digest all this and report it, you know, up the chain to the people that I work with.

I think you kind of nailed it when you said it’s, you got to show your work. And, you know, unfortunately this is not necessarily always true, but It can be that it’s just a form demand letter with some zero stuff. And it’s, and it really does make your job difficult. And that’s what I always tell people.

It’s like, listen, like, you know, you can’t just set, you got to show, you know, you got to show them. And so I appreciate you saying that. And again, you know, the verdict search is super easy. Join a database, you know, it will pay for itself like over and over and over again. Um, Because we mediate every case, right?

So, you know, if you’re going to mediation or doing that, and of course, you know, I personally, of course, love focus groups, and not to beat a dead horse, but just [00:44:00] just know that, like, the person that actually controls the purse strings. probably did not sit in on the depositions and probably doesn’t have the time in their schedule to watch an entire deposition video start to finish.

And the defense lawyer may or may not actually have the technical skill or competence or someone on their team to show clips of the deposition video. So if you get, if you have an extremely sympathetic client, right, who testified in a way that everybody would love or sympathize with or whatever it may be.

Or you crucified the corporate representative for the other side and the person looked angry or like a lying liar or whatever it may be. You just got this really good deposition testimony and made him look like crap, you know, on video or your witness is amazing. Take the time to create some clips of that.

Put it in your demand letter so that the [00:45:00] people that are actually authorizing the settlement authority on your case see it right so that they have the ability to quickly and easily click a link and watch it. Because it’s one thing for me to tell an in house attorney or claims manager that I think the witness came across as very sympathetic, or I think our defense witness did not present well, and that I don’t think they’re going to be the best witness for us.

It’s an entirely different thing to show them and let them watch it for themselves and make their own assessment. And so again, it kind of comes back to one thing we started the show with, which is You know, video is such a powerful form of evidence. And I think that with modern tools with using focus groups, you can really leverage video in ways that, you know, historically were took a lot of time money to do.

You can do it a lot more effectively and efficiently now with software. Yeah, absolutely. And again, like we are a society of videos, like the [00:46:00] number two, I think search engine is YouTube. Like we are a video. We, we expect it like right now. So that makes sense, you know, putting in your demand letters. I love the idea.

You said earlier as well, like send it to your mediators, you know, like they’re going to appreciate that, especially like, Hey, I got five clips. It’s going to take you less than five minutes. It’ll tell you everything you need to know about the case. Like, perfect. Save everyone some time. So. Well, awesome girl.

Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I know that Skribe is going to solve so many awesome problems, but the number one being like, let’s get video testimony and let’s make it at a reasonable price. As long as also sinking, like, I think that’s also super helpful. If you have depots that have not been synced yet, so we will put your email, we’ll get the, the, the website put in there and the only other plug I want to Again, the website is so helpful and one of the cool things they already have up there for anybody who wants it are notices, like literally verbatim notices for [00:47:00] states where people are using Skribe.

So don’t even worry about having to create a new, new notice. They already have it up there on the website for you. So you guys are taking a lot of pain out of using this new, awesome tool. And I really appreciate that. Yeah, well, I appreciate you having me on the show and give me a chance to explain a little bit about, you know, what Skribe does, but also why it exists.

Like, what, why in the world did we start the company? What problems are we trying to solve? And, you know, hopefully some of that resonates with your audience. I think it absolutely will. I can tell you that as those are definitely some pain points that we have, you know, speaking collectively as a plaintiff’s lawyer.

So again, thank you so much, Karl, for joining the podcast and I hope everybody takes a chance to go to Skribe and take a look at it. Maybe use it for your next deposition. And until next time, thank you so much for listening.