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| Sanction 1.6 | Litigation Support |
| A new product has recently
been introduced into the arena of trial presentation software. Sanction, by Verdict
Systems of Tempe, Ariz., has developed this new, powerful and full-featured presentation
software with an eye towards the mass market. While there are many positive attributes to
the software, perhaps the single most important feature for the average practitioner is
its remarkably low price. A single license costs $395, which includes unlimited technical
support. This contrasts with other similar products, which generally cost at least a
thousand dollars more, require additional mandatory support contracts and often require
the purchase of additional modules to equal the features that come standard with Sanction.
The bottom line is that there is now a trial presentation product on the market with an
affordable pricing structure that will allow any trial attorney to use this technology. Any user familiar with a Windows 9x environment will feel right at home using Sanction. Its layout is very similar to Windows Explorer. The Windows interface includes a main screen with tree and list views to the left of the viewer that allow easy organization of presentation items in a familiar fashion. Presentation items can be organized by type using the predefined categories such as video, documents, images and transcripts. There are also some custom categories that allow the user to place items in a temporary folder, or keep track of items that have been offered and received into evidence. Unfortunately, Sanction does not support OLE applications as other products do but it will tab between PowerPoint or Presentations, and the presentation mode in a relatively seamless way. Moving items into Sanction is easy since an item can be dragged-and-dropped into the appropriate category directly from Windows Explorer. Batch imports are also available and can be coupled with popular programs like Summation, Opticon, DocuLex and Trial Director. Sanction can even be used as a scanning utility, enabling the user to create load files in multiple formats which can then be exported into other presentation packages. Its DDE links are not what they should be, but as other litigation support software becomes fully 32-bit compliant this problem should be overcome. This will allow Sanction to be used as a viewer with other popular products like Summation, Concordance and CaseMap. Sanction also includes a powerful find feature for locating specific items. For the more advanced user, it can customize and import delimited ASCII files. Sanction and even supports SQL search capabilities. Another feature familiar to Windows 9x users is the right click menu functionality throughout the program. The adage, "When in doubt, right click," certainly applies to Sanction. An added benefit to the new user is the comprehensive context based help files, and the hot spot "what's this" help feature. You don't need to have Internet access to Web-based help files to get the help you need. This is obviously important to trial attorneys who don't have Internet access during trial. Sanction includes everything needed to create trial presentations. It also allows the user to create customized video clips and synchronized video-deposition clips without the need to purchase additional modules. Video-text synchronization can even be performed in-house with Sanction assuming a digitized version of the deposition video and an ASCII text deposition transcript are available. In terms of Sanction's trial presentation features, it's easy to create files in which you can organize your presentation materials by witness, subject, day of trial or any other method that works with your personal style. Once the documents are loaded into Sanction they can be marked up with the available annotation tools. Layered annotations can be created to lead a witness through testimony on a given exhibit. Sanction includes all of the standard drawing tools usually included with such software, although to some extent the annotation capabilities aren't as elegant as those found in other programs. All of the annotation features are available to mark up an exhibit in court while in the presentation mode as well. Sanction also offers great flexibility in terms of launching a particular exhibit. While Sanction supports barcode launching, it also accepts blind typing of the document ID or exhibit number. The toolbar in its presentation mode even includes a box list which contains a list of all the items placed in the presentation folder. You are able to display documents in full screen or split screen mode, either side by side or top and bottom. Icons on the toolbar allow you to easily point to the zone in which you want to display the image. You can use the split screen feature to combine presentation modes. A design drawing can be compared to an actual photograph of the object under consideration. Perhaps the most powerful tool of all is Sanction's video clip creator. This tool is used to manage multimedia files. It allows you to create video clips simply by marking the beginning and ending points of the video involved. Once the clips are created they can then be moved about or reordered as needed. With the clip creator synchronized video-transcripts can be edited to create clips instantly using the "page.line" syntax. In addition, the clip list import feature allows creation of clips from ASCII delimited text files in seconds. There is no question that such a powerful, yet reasonably priced product like Sanction will cause a quantum leap in the use of trial presentation software by the average trial lawyer. |
Verdict Systems LLC (480) 627-2430 www.verdictsystems.com Windows 95 and above $395 Reviewed by Bruce A. Olson, managing member, Olson Law Group, LLC, Appleton, Wis. PROS CONS VERDICT |
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