54
The Advocates’ Society Paperless Trials Manual – May 2015
25
make notes to the JBD database in the local copies on their laptops that other parties
cannot see.
Counsel and the judge keep track of documents entered as exhibits in a column of the
web-hosted database. Note that the judge may elect to designate the entire JBD as
one exhibit and simply note, in a designated column in the database, which documents
are actually proven by witnesses during the course of the trial, or she may wish to
designate each proven document as a separate exhibit in the database, and so indicate
in the designated column.
Read-ins from discovery transcripts may be uploaded into most if not all document
management software programs currently in use.
70
Documents may be displayed via document management software or via trial
presentation software. Counsel using such software load documents from the
document management software into the presentation software for use, and may launch
it from the presentation software, which gives examining counsel a range of
presentation options similar to those described above
for TrialPad. Note that a number
of unique features are available with the Exhibit Bridge program.
71
The Final Court File
Counsel should consider whether it is necessary or desirable, at the conclusion of the
trial, to file with the court a copy of the JBD database containing only those documents
proven by witnesses,
72
with exhibit numbers if individual exhibit numbers were assigned
by the trial judge. Counsel may wish to consider filing a briefcased version instead of or
70
Ontario E-Discovery Implementation Committee, What is an Electronic Trial?
(http://www.oba.org/Advocacy/E-Discovery/Model-Precedents
) at p.3.
71
For example:
1. The Registrar / consultant technician has the ability to label exhibits as they are proven and to
generate, at the end of each court day and the trial, an electronic copy of all exhibits entered during the
day and over the course of the entire trial. This eliminates the need to file an entire JBD with
documents that may not become part of the trial record. Rather, the complete JBD is uploaded into a
web-hosted case database and only those documents that become exhibits need be filed with the
court.
2. Counsel may add documents “on the fly” by providing them to the Registrar / technician as PDFs on an
USB key. These documents are loaded into the Registrar’s / technician’s computer and do not
become known or visible to other parties, the judge or the witness unless or until they are called up by
counsel. Once proven through a witness, they may be marked as exhibits and enter the court record
in the same manner as documents from the JBD.
3. At the end of the trial, counsel and the court receive an electronic list of trial exhibits, hyperlinked to
PDF documents, which may be accessed without Exhibit Bridge software.
Note that, at present, in-court staff and technical support for Exhibit Bridge from its Canadian vendor
(Neesons—visit: http://www.neesonsreporting.com/services/exhibit-bridge/
) is available in Toronto but not
elsewhere in the province.
72
This assumes that there is no agreement among counsel that all documents are admitted for the truth of their
contents.
