The Challenge of Complex Litigation

"I drafted what would have probably been a five- or six-hour project in maybe two hours. It was a big time saver."

 

 

 

 

As head of the litigation department at McMullin Injury Law, Nate Langston handles a demanding caseload. With over a decade of experience and multiple jury trials under his belt, he understands the importance of efficiency without compromising thoroughness, especially when drafting critical motions.

"I'm pretty busy. I have maybe too many cases to run the way I would prefer to," Langston said. "So anywhere I can save some time is a big deal to me."

Like many of his legal industry peers, Langston initially took a cautious approach to artificial intelligence (AI) tools. "I'm a little bit old school," he said. "I have an actual law book on my desk." However, his experience with Transcript Genius, Steno’s award-winning AI transcript analysis tool,  has transformed his approach to motion practice and case preparation, leading him to embrace the technology that's reshaping how attorneys handle complex litigation.

Streamlining Legal Work: Saving Hours on Every Motion

Transcript Genius has become an invaluable tool for multiple aspects of Langston’s practice:

Motion Practice: After deposing an unprepared corporate witness, Langston had meticulously documented the deponent’s lack of knowledge throughout the deposition. When it came time to draft his motion, he used Transcript Genius to quickly identify every instance where the witness demonstrated insufficient preparation, complete with page and line citations. 

"I had spent a lot of time in the deposition laying the groundwork for the motion that I knew I'd be filing because this witness didn't know anything," he explained. "Rather than having to go back through the deposition and find all the different places, Transcript Genius just said he was unprepared in this way, he was unprepared in this way, he was unprepared in this way, with the citations to the line and page numbers." 

Mediation Briefs: When preparing mediation briefs, Langston uses Transcript Genius to quickly locate and extract impactful testimony. "I like to input quotations from what the witnesses said in their depositions into a mediation brief for the mediator's purposes," he explained. "I'll say, 'What did this witness say about how her injuries have impacted her life?' That's the stuff the mediator is going to want to know about. So boom, it'll spit it out, and I can copy and paste that into the mediation brief without having to go kind of dig through the transcript."

Deposition Analysis: Transcript Genius helps Langston quickly locate specific testimony across multiple transcripts, including older depositions he's converted to text files. "I've also used it to help me queue into specific issues that I don't want to read the whole transcript or to flag for a specific issue," he noted. 

In one recent case involving wage loss claims, he used Transcript Genius to find every instance where a witness discussed lost wages or impaired earning capacity. "Rather than having to read the whole transcript or do a very thorough word search... the transcript genius can pick out when it's talking about 'I didn't go to work' even if they didn't use those specific words," he explained.

Legacy Transcript Analysis: Langston has found additional value in being able to analyze older depositions. "I've taken old depositions as well and converted them into a .txt file, and then uploaded it and queried depositions that were not taken by Steno, and it's just the same - it works really well," he said. This capability allows him to leverage the tool's benefits across his entire case history, not just new depositions.

"It's so easy and the learning curve is so small that if they could just try it, they'd be astounded"

Accuracy You Can Trust

While naturally diligent about verifying AI-generated content, Langston has found Transcript Genius to be consistently reliable. "I don't think I've found a time where it was inaccurate," he noted. "I've found that there are times where it paraphrased differently than I would, but I didn't find it to be inaccurate."

Langston recalls a recent wage loss claim where Transcript Genius identified crucial testimony at the end of a deposition that he might have initially missed. "I wouldn't have recognized or realized, without further review, that the wage issue was brought up at the end of the deposition also," he explained. "And of course, I took the deposition, but it happened two months ago and 20 other cases later, and I wouldn't have remembered that."

The tool's ability to understand context, rather than just searching for specific terms, proves particularly valuable. As Langston noted, "Maybe they didn't use those words specifically, but Transcript Genius can pick out when it's talking about 'I didn't go to work;' the word search might not have picked that up."

Easy Integration into Legal Practice

Langston found Transcript Genius remarkably intuitive. "I'm a little bit old school," he admitted. Yet even as someone who describes himself as "a novice at AI," he found the transition seamless.

"I haven't felt like there's much of a learning curve at all," Langston explained. "I just ask it in native language what I want it to do, and I feel like it's very responsive and gives me what I'm looking for... You just ask a question into the transcript bar and it will pop out an answer virtually immediately."

For busy attorneys who may be hesitant about adopting new technology, Langston emphasized the minimal learning curve: "It's so easy and the learning curve is so small that if they could just try it, they'd be astounded."

The Future of Legal Practice

Transcript Genius has become an integral part of Langston’s practice. As AI continues to transform the legal industry, tools like Transcript Genius are becoming essential for maintaining competitive edge while upholding the highest standards of practice. "The usefulness of it is amazing," Langston says, "and it's going to change every industry."

The impact of AI on legal practice is becoming so significant that Langston believes it will soon be considered a professional necessity: "It's going to be so good that you'd probably be committing malpractice to not use it." This perspective underscores the growing importance of embracing legal technology not just for efficiency, but as a fundamental component of legal practice.

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