Create a trial notebook with new iPad app

Apple's iPad.

Despite the love affair many attorneys have been carrying on with their iPads, one small blot on the relationship has been the lack of a good outliner app.

Now lawyers can resume their tablet worship. An app called NoteBook, which Mac-using lawyers have already found indispensible, was released for the iPad last month.

Like any outliner program, the app is handy for lawyers who want to take notes and organize information in hierarchical, outline format.

But with an iPad version, trial lawyers can use NoteBook’s tools to organize and store briefcase-loads of notes and documents, whether the project at hand is managing a client matter, picking a jury, composing a brief, deposing a witness or trying a case.

The screen simulates a note pad with grey-blue lines and a left-hand margin, a comforting sight for attorneys. You can create a table of contents with links to color-coded tabs that divide your notebook into subsections. Other attachments such as pdfs, exhibits, sound clips or video can be dropped into your notes, rather than stored separately, and marked up with an “annotation” option allowing you to highlight, circle, draw diagrams or add text. The notebook is indexed and searchable.

Lawyers are still test-driving the app and have already found some bugs. A few complaints have emerged about its slow speed and, most relevant to litigators, its inability to display files externally. So if you are using NoteBook on your iPad as a trial notebook and then want to project an exhibit for the jury, you would have to open another app to do so, interrupting the seamlessness of your presentation.

The NoteBook app is put out by Circus Ponies and costs $29, and is available at www.circusponies.com/notebook-ipad/take-great-notes.