Just a year after launching as the first, and to-date, only truly touch-optimized legal presentation application for Windows, Legistek is proud to announce Limine 2.0, the next generation of the Limine platform, which allows practitioners and support professionals alike to collaboratively organize, manage, and present evidence at every stage of litigation from the close of e-discovery up through and including trial. With Limine 2.0, teams can store all their evidence securely on a private cloud, and access it anywhere, any time, from any device running Windows.
With Limine 2.0, you can:
- Securely access and present hosted evidence and deposition videos from anywhere in the world, from any Windows device, using the exact same Limine client application in the office, on the road, or in court
- Host content securely on an internal network, through a third-party host, or on Legistek's private cloud powered by Aquipt Matterpoint
- Restrict software functionality by user, and control access to specific case file content via user-level and folder-level permissions, all enforced server-side
- Selectively share content with experts, witnesses, clients, vendors, or even opponents in real time (allowing for paperless depositions and arbitrations)
- Receive document productions and deposition transcript, exhibit, and video deliverables directly into online case files from Legistek-affiliated litigation support providers
- Prepare for trial collaboratively with the entire team, wherever they are located, including in-house and third-party litigation support professionals
- Selectively download case file content to a local machine for offline use (e.g. in court) and synchronize offline changes back to the server
- Create customized automated solutions for user management, file security, and data import/export using a thoroughly documented .NET developer API (available to enterprise licensees and litigation support providers)
Limine 2.0 will be available in early 2017 to all Limine users.
We'll be releasing more details about this exciting new platform, and will begin soliciting applications for pilot cases to act as live beta tests, in the weeks to come. In the meantime, for more information, please contact us.
As you may have seen on Twitter, our great friends at Aquipt, Inc. have invited Limine creator Peter Moore to present at their booth next week at the iconic ILTA conference, on the future of Limine and its role in litigation support. Please join us at booth 715 on Tuesday 8/30, or Wednesday 8/31, at 2:30 PM both days, for this special announcement and presentation!
If you can't make it to the conference, check back here on Tuesday to find out what we have have in store for you. Until then, you'll have to settle for this teaser.
Cheers!
Announcing Major Update
New Version 1.3 Offers a Unified E-Discovery and Evidence Presentation Platform Perfect for Attorneys and Support Professionals Alike
Try it Today For Free
In the short time Limine has been available to the public, it has already made its mark as a top-tier trial presentation platform for touchscreens and tablets. Lawyers and paralegals love Limine’s intuitive and user-friendly presentation interface and its amazingly crisp and dynamic visuals.
But we’ve only scratched the surface of what evidence presentation really means. For too long presentation has been seen as a niche function, relevant only to the tiny fraction of cases that go to trial. Yet presentation is so much more. It happens every day in evidence review meetings. In depositions and deposition prep. In briefs and hearings. And of course in trials and arbitrations. The EDRM spectrum doesn’t end with document production, but with presentation. And as of today, presentation begins in Limine.
We at Legistek are thrilled to announce Limine version 1.3, a major update that brings a host of e-discovery functionality and enterprise-grade database support to an already outstanding document presentation platform. The result: a single application that can support the entire litigation workflow post-document review and production, all the way through trial and beyond. Take a look.
A Presentation Tool for E-Discovery or an E-Discovery Tool for Presentation?
Limine now takes over once documents have been processed, reviewed, and produced, giving litigators a simple and intuitive, yet powerful way to manage and ultimately present the most important evidence in the case. Nothing is lost in the transition from production to presentation; Limine makes it easy to import and retain 100% of the essential metadata that lets you find and understand the evidence that was produced by both sides. Advanced field searching helps you find documents quickly using any criteria you can devise, while dynamic search folders help you keep documents organized automatically.
Unprecedented Control over the Appearance of Documents
While any decent e-discovery tool can help you find a document, none gives lawyers the same level of control over the presentation of that document that Limine does. With Limine version 1.3, you can apply colorful exhibit stickers to documents, add extra margins, make redactions before depositions or trial, set custom brandings at the document or page level, and much more.
Effortlessly create PDFs – or even supplemental or replacement document productions – with your documents’ polished look. Or, launch the native file directly from Limine during a deposition or trial for files like spreadsheets, where single-page TIFFs just won’t suffice.
Introducing “Field Builder” – The Last Field Value Populator You Will Ever Need
The transition from e-discovery to depositions and trial can often mean hundreds of hours wasted on repetitive tasks like renumbering exhibits, resolving conflicting sets of exhibit numbers, cleaning up brandings, and a plethora of other tedious tasks. Those late nights end here. With Limine’s new Field Builder, if you can imagine a way to automate a task, Limine can probably make it happen:- Create new field values with custom prefixes, suffixes, and/or auto-numbering sequences
- Extract new fields from existing value (e.g., extract “Arthur 000005” as “BegDoc#” from “PX-001_Arthur 000005 – Arthur 00008.pdf”)
- Copy, split, or combine fields using separators
- Remove (or add) padded zeroes from exhibit or page IDs (e.g., “Arthur 000005” can become “A5” for easy recall during trial)
- Bulk-edit existing field values
- Renumber exhibits and pages to eliminate sequence gaps
- Specify a field (i.e., BegDoc#) as the starting value for an auto-numbering sequence
As always, all field data can also be exported to CSV and edited using Excel for those demanding ultimate flexibility.
Importing Documents Has Never Been Easier – Also Processing?
Importing standalone or unprocessed documents into Limine is easier than ever. PDFs can now be dragged right into a Limine case file folder, while PDF imports have been sped up 100 fold.
But unprecedented in a presentation tool, Limine now features a lightweight e-discovery processing engine that can import virtually any Office document, and even PSTs and ZIP files, extract all the relevant metadata, and make documents that are ready for presentation or review and production in minutes. While for most cases it won't replace the leading processing and analytic review platforms as your primary e-discovery tool, when a few dozen documents need to be processed, redacted, Bates stamped, and produced in an hour on a Friday night and you're the only one left in the office, Limine can come to the rescue.
Expanded Multimedia Format Support and Features
It’s not just e-discovery professionals who will find something to love about the new Limine. Trial lawyers and trial support professionals will appreciate Limine’s tremendously expanded support for common multimedia file formats like MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 and many more, both for synchronized deposition videos as well as standalone video files.
Limine’s new precision tuner will also make trial support technicians feel right at home: deposition lines can be edited right down to the audio sample if need be, so you’ll never have to guess what the audience will hear in court.
Speaking of depositions, transcripts can now be exported from Limine to PDF in condensed or full-page format, with designations highlighted and labeled, so the previously excruciating process of making and exchanging deposition designations is now a breeze.
But Wait, There’s More!
Believe it or not, all that doesn’t even come close to the full range of improvements we’ve made to Limine in version 1.3. Here are a few more:- All Limine installations are now touchscreen and tablet-ready (if running Windows 8 or better with compatible hardware); a new full-screen “tablet mode” optimizes and simplifies the user interface for presenting from a touchscreen, while mouse and keyboard users have the full power of a Windows desktop application at their command
- New support for Microsoft SQL Server enables organizations to deploy and use Limine in networked environments and expands the supported case file size to practically unlimited levels (subject to hardware quality and available network bandwidth, of course)
- Limine deployments are now possible in a cloud-based environment for seamless remote access and collaboration
- Keyboard shortcuts are now 100% customizable
- Limine now has native support for modern 64-bit processors (32-bit will remain as an available option for users who require it)
So now you’re going to make me pay a ton to upgrade, right?
Nope. All existing Limine users – both yearly subscribers and project-based licensees – will be able to upgrade to 1.3 immediately upon release at no additional charge.
The single-user yearly subscription license will remain at an unbelievable $499 per user per year, but this introductory pricing won’t last long. As always, substantial discounts are available to organizations purchasing 5 or more licenses, especially those opting for enterprise-wide deployment. Alternatively, client-billable team-based licensing will be available too, with details to be announced soon.
When and How to Get It
While we are putting the final touches on this new release and finalizing the documentation, Limine 1.3 is being made available for public preview right now. All lawyers and litigation support professionals are eligible to participate. Comments, criticisms, bug reports, and questions are always most welcome.
Current Limine customers and preview users will automatically receive a download link for this release candidate of the new Limine, and can install the new version on their machines without having to uninstall any previous versions.
Let us know what you think, and thanks for your support!
A common question we receive from professional trial support consultants is whether Limine can or should replace their existing PC-based presentation software. The answer to that question is different for different types of cases and workflows. Originally, Limine was conceived of for the kind of case profile for which hiring outside technical support was not a viable or desired option. Hands down, we believe Limine to be the superior choice for lawyers trying lower-budget cases looking for the same technological advantages enjoyed by their often better-funded opponents, or for any lawyer or paralegal simply looking for an intuitive presentation suite they can learn quickly and use themselves.
However, as the product evolved and the needs of the legal community became more clear to us, it likewise became clear that Limine could serve an emerging yet crucial unmet need in another type of case profile – one where outside support is desired (or even essential!) but where the lawyers still want a more hands-on role in presenting in court. Here Limine arguably shines brightest, because these attorneys and their support technicians need not sacrifice any of the raw power they could enjoy using other tools, yet gain an elegant touchscreen interface that leaves no mistake among the jurors or opposing counsel who is trying the case. Technicians can add immense value even in these cases by, for example, mirroring the attorney’s screen from their own device, calling up documents while still letting the lawyer add the markups or confront witnesses up close and personal with a tablet. This is also to say nothing of the key role techs can play in preparing a case database based on well-established EDRM best practices – something most trial presentation suites barely address - and choreographing dynamic evidence-rich deposition video presentations unlike anything the industry has seen.
We recognize not all big cases fit this profile, and so many experienced technicians will no doubt wish to keep their favorite legacy tool(s) for cases where a pure hot seat paradigm makes more sense, while still being able to resell and support Limine – at no upfront cost! – for clients who do wish to use it.
Finally, for experienced technicians who are looking for a complete replacement for other tools to continue hot seating from exclusively, we won’t lie to you: you will find Limine very different from what you've been trained on, and may not like it at first. There’s virtually always a highly efficient way to accomplish the tasks you're accustomed to, but it may not be obvious if you’re used to other tools (this is especially true if you’re not familiar with e-discovery standards and practices, such as field mapping). But, the fact is Limine has a great number of novel features that technicians will find immensely useful, even in a hot seating situation. In the coming weeks we will be releasing a series of videos designed specifically for support consultants demonstrating some of Limine's most sophisticated workflow-related features, so you can see firsthand what we mean.
Either way, it’s your reputation on the line as much as it is ours, so ultimately it’s up to you to choose the right tool for the job. That’s why we give you at least 30 days completely free to try out the product, and will happily extend that on a case by case basis when necessary to give you a complete picture of what our software can do. If after those 30 days you decide you prefer the other tools, great! We know there are plenty of good options out there for hot-seating, and while we will always consider thoughtful feedback, we didn’t set out to make yet another iteration of well-established technology. What we did set out to do is entirely change the way both lawyers and technicians think about evidence presentation. When you’re ready to hop on this train, we’d love to have you.
After nearly two years of development, feedback from over a hundred preview users, presentment at two national trade shows, and numerous courtroom victories, it is our great pleasure to announce that Limine is here!
- Modern Edition Rentals
- Classic Edition Purchases
- Exclusive Discounts for our Early Adopters
- Try Limine Completely Free for 30 Days
Limine Modern Edition Tablet Rentals are Now Available
All lawyers and trial teams, no matter how small their budget, can at last access state-of-the-art legal presentation technology for a fraction of the total cost of legacy platforms, with Legistek's one-of-a-kind device rental program, powered by leading legal IT equipment rental company, Aquipt, Inc.
How it Works
Obtaining Limine for your short trial or hearing couldn't be easier.
- Purchase the Limine Modern Edition: Short-Term Rental product right here on our site.
- Choose your shipping and handling method: standard (delivery within 14 days), or expedited (delivery within 10 days).
- Immediately after placing your order, you will receive an e-mail with instructions for downloading and accessing Limine Classic PC Edition, which is completely free with your order for the duration of your project. Start importing your evidence and cutting your deposition clips right away from your office PC.
- Your tablet will be shipped directly from Aquipt, pristine and ready to go with exactly the software you need: Limine Modern Edition, Classic Edition, and (optionally) Office 2013. When it arrives, simply copy your case file folder in Windows over to the tablet, launch Limine Modern Edition, and start wowing your clients and jurors.
- The tablet should be returned with the supplied return label within 30 days of your order, but if your trial or hearing goes longer, not to worry; just contact us to confirm payment of a modest extended use fee.
Don't forget to check out the recommended accessories to make your trial experience even better, like the Microsoft Wireless Displayer Adapter or the Dell M900HD Portable Projector. More information is available on the Modern Edition product page.
For Bigger Cases
The short-term rental program is perfect for short trials or arbitrations being handled by only one or two lawyers, but for larger projects, or multiple users, Limine Modern Edition touch-screen devices are also available through qualified litigation support professionals. In the coming weeks, we'll be introducing our certified resellers to our already vast network of preview and retail users. In the meantime, if you have a preferred support provider whom you want to start supporting Limine for your cases, or are one yourself, contact us right away to find out how to join our growing community of authorized support professionals.
Limine Classic PC Edition is Now Available for Yearly Use
Whether you were trained on legacy platforms, want the flexibility of using Limine year-round to support multiple projects, or just prefer to use your own hardware, Limine Classic PC Edition, available as a standalone yearly subscription product, offers all the features you've come to expect from a trial presentation tool and then some.
Besides being an outstanding presentation platform in its own right, with Limine Classic PC Edition, you can:
- Deploy Limine on any PC running Windows 7 or higher
- Get unlimited support and updates for the duration of your subscription with NO ADDITIONAL MAINTENANCE FEES
- Bulk-import trial exhibits
- Convert MDB (Sanction) format synchronized video depositions into Limine format
- Import PowerPoint (PPTX) files directly into your case file
- Bulk-export labelled trial exhibits to PDF
Limine Classic Edition is available for yearly purchase; a single subscription can be used and installed by a single person but on an unlimited number of devices. For office-wide deployment, however, Legistek offers unbelievably attractive enterprise pricing. Just contact us to learn more.
Try Limine Completely Free for 30 Days
You don't have to take our word for it. If you haven't already participated in the Community Preview of Limine Classic PC Edition, you can sign up at any time right on our website, and try Limine completely free for 30 days.
If you've already participated in the trial program but still have questions or feel you need more time to evaluate Limine now that it's commercially available, just contact us directly and we'll be happy to accommodate you.
Thank you!
It has been our pleasure to develop Limine for you, and will be our greater pleasure still to sell and support Limine across all facets of the legal community. The support and encouragement of our early adopters and other well-wishers have helped lead us here, but the next step is entirely up to you. We're here to support you whenever you're ready to take your case IN YOUR HANDS.
Litigation Support Professionals Can Finally Bridge the Gap Between E-Discovery and Trial Support
For nearly a decade the legal technology industry has helped guide lawyers, clients, courts, and support professionals alike through the civil justice system’s transition from a paper-centered institution to a data-centered one. Yet the very purpose of discovery – the ultimate presentation of evidence in court – is too often overlooked by litigators and the technologists that support them until the eve of trial. Everyone knows that only a fraction of large civil cases that go to the discovery phase ever go to trial, and so when they do, most lawyers and even many e-discovery specialists are happy to hand the reins to someone else rather than spend dozens or hundreds of hours they don’t have learning tools they may only use once or twice a year. Conversely, trial support experts rarely benefit from the powerful modern technologies and thousands of hours’ worth of document organization, coding, and review that brought the case to penultimate “Trial Preparation Phase” in the first place, since the software many of them use was never designed to fit seamlessly as an integrated piece of a larger litigation support model. The result: lawyers give up control; discovery vendors pass off trial support responsibilities to potential competitors; and trial technology specialists, paralegals, and attorneys spend sleepless nights reinventing the wheel.
Somehow, the legal technology revolution which, over the last 10 years, has redefined the nature of litigation itself, has also managed to pass over the most important phase of the case – the trial. That is, until now.
Limine Classic Pro is the third and final core component of Legistek’s revolutionary trial support platform, giving evidence presentation its rightful place as the final and most critical piece of a unified litigation technology model. Classic Pro complements the intuitive and visually stunning presentation capabilities of Limine Modern Edition, and supplements the robust legacy-style presentation functions of Limine Classic Edition, giving litigation support professionals with even a basic understanding of e-discovery and pretrial procedure the ability to seamlessly transition large case files from the discovery phase to the trial phase, with no knowledge loss, no redundancy, and virtually no learning curve.
What Makes Limine Different?
Other presentation tools can pull in documents from load files, but only Limine lets support experts literally transform an e-discovery repository into a trial database, accessible by their attorneys and themselves equally, through a series of straightforward, extremely powerful, and incredibly time-efficient operations.
It all starts by exporting a document production, consisting of all the documents the lawyers have identified as possible trial exhibits. The production should include images, full text, and all the metadata and even coding that could conceivably be useful to the team at trial.
Next, the production is ingested into Limine. Any or all of the source metadata fields can be mapped to Limine’s built-in fields or to unlimited user-defined and searchable metadata fields. The documents, and up to 100% of the information previously associated with them, is now available to you or your clients – regardless of their Limine edition – for organizing, searching, marking up, and presenting.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. After the raw documents and metadata are imported is when the real fun begins. Using nothing more than Excel and Limine Classic Pro, thousands upon thousands of exhibits can be renamed, assigned exhibit IDs, labels, and organized into folders in just minutes, all from a trial exhibit list organized in CSV format, employing the same field-mapping procedure used to ingest the file in the first place (a procedure with which e-discovery experts are well familiar).
Metadata mapping isn’t limited to e-discovery documents either. Stragglers (pleadings, demonstratives, and other documents not in the e-discovery database) in PDF, PowerPoint, or multimedia formats can be loaded through Limine’s simple direct-import function, and have exhibit IDs and any other metadata assigned from CSV files alongside the rest of the database, or assigned automatically based on configurable parsing of the file names themselves.
But enough about the intake side – what about output? Once the exhibits are organized and labeled, Limine Classic Pro can export them in bulk, labels and all, to give to the other side, the court, or the jury. Classic Pro natively supports exporting PDF and video exhibits using the JERS (Jury Evidence Recording System) format widely mandated by Federal courts, allowing you to specify both the exhibit ID and description fields to use in the electronic versions that go back to the jury room. Importing and exporting using the official EDRM XML schema is also coming soon!
With Limine Classic Pro, you can turn hundreds or even thousands of case documents and multimedia into organized and labeled trial exhibits in minutes – saving your client countless hours of wasted time and money printing, labeling, scanning, and reorganizing them by hand (not to mention QCing). Plus, you’ll be prepared to instantly locate documents based on full text or metadata searches right in the courtroom. Never lose a byte of data or metadata – or kill a single tree – in the transition from e-discovery to trial again.
Limine Brings it All Together
Big trials may be rare, and the process leading up to them ugly, but when they do occur they are like a classical sculpture – the culmination of thousands of hours spent scrutinizing and filtering through hundreds of thousands of pages of evidence, pleadings, testimony, and multimedia to chip away the irrelevant or unnecessary pieces and reveal the story that explains why your client should win. The software used to polish and present that sculpture should be the final conduit through which all those years of effort are channeled efficiently, effectively, and collaboratively into a winning case. Limine is the ultimate gateway for electronically presented evidence. On the other side is the jury, and victory.
Sales and Availability
Limine Classic Pro will be deployed July 15 alongside the rest of the Limine product family, which includes Modern Edition (licensed on a per-project basis direct from Legistek or through certified reseller partners), and Classic Edition (provided free as part of any project-based license and also available as a standalone download with a yearly subscription).
Classic Pro is marketed exclusively to litigation support professionals and law firms’ in-house trial support departments, however, and will not be sold as a standalone product. Reseller partners and their clients’ support staff can benefit from unlimited use of Classic Pro for their Limine-powered projects at no additional cost to them or their clients. Law firm staff interested in year-round access should contact Legistek enterprise sales to quote a specific number of Pro-enabled accounts as part of an enterprise-wide deployment of Limine Classic at your firm.
Legistek Partners with Aquipt to Launch Device Rental Program Designed Exclusively for Trial Lawyers
As a main pillar of Limine's commercial release, Legistek Corporation is thrilled to announce the upcoming launch of its Limine Device Rental Program, powered by leading litigation technology rental company, Aquipt, Inc. Aquipt’s state-of-the-art hardware and nationwide network will let Legistek put touchscreen devices pre-loaded with its Limine trial presentation software in the hands of trial lawyers throughout the country for the duration of their trials. With this program, solo or small trial teams can bring a level of technological sophistication to their courtroom presentations more than rivaling that of their well-funded opponents, and at a fraction of the cost, without the need for any capital investment in hardware or software.
At the program’s inception, lawyers anywhere in the U.S. will be able to rent a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 tablet, with the latest version of Limine pre-installed, for just $599 per trial (plus tax and shipping). This will include up to three weeks with the Surface Pro in hand, one full month of Limine Classic PC Edition for use on office computers, and up to two user accounts licensed for both products. Also included is the Microsoft Wireless Display Adapter, which plugs directly into any HDMI-equipped video device, allowing for complete mobility in the courtroom.
Additional hardware options are in the works too. In the interim, Legistek’s experts can work with Aquipt to put together a complete courtroom technology plan for any customer with more complex needs, or provide a reference to a qualified litigation support specialist in their area. Legistek is also actively working to grow its network of litigation support partners, through whom larger trial teams will be able to lease Limine devices and obtain Classic PC licenses for longer trials.
Limine device rentals will be available for ordering directly at www.legistek.com beginning July 15. Need Limine for a trial or arbitration earlier than that? Just contact us.
Since LIMINE’s debut at LegalTech 2015, the response from the legal community has been clear and overwhelming - you are ready to put your case in your hands. And LIMINE is ready to make that happen.
Beginning July 15, LIMINE Modern Edition for touchscreen devices, and LIMINE Classic Edition for Windows 7 PCs, will both be available commercially, directly through Legistek on our website, as well as through qualified litigation support professionals.
But if that isn’t enough to get you excited, prepare to be blown away.
LIMINE Modern Edition, which promises to forever change how evidence is presented in court, will be available to individual lawyers and trial teams with touch-devices included. Cutting-edge tablet PCs, like the Microsoft Surface Pro 3, running LIMINE and Windows 8.1 (soon Windows 10) will be available for rental on either a per-trial or per-week basis, depending on the size of the team and anticipated length of the trial.
What does this mean for your practice’s bottom line? You'll be able to use the legal industry’s newest groundbreaking presentation technology at your next trial or arbitration, all with:
- No capital investments
- No IT upgrades
- No maintenance fees
In short, Legistek is bringing software and hardware-as-a-service to trial practice. Our vision is that LIMINE Modern Edition-equipped devices become a staple of the modern trial, alongside the whiteboard, document camera, and projector. Even share the cost of a rental device with an opponent.
If you also want the flexibility of having modern, user-friendly trial presentation software available year-round, worry not. LIMINE Classic Edition licenses can be purchased on an annual basis, as well as being included FREE as part of all LIMINE Modern Edition rental packages. You’ll be able to prepare your whole case file in Classic; when trial comes around, just transfer your file to a Modern Edition device and start presenting.
In the coming days and weeks, we’ll be unveiling more details about these exciting products, because if you thought you knew what LIMINE was after seeing it at LegalTech or downloading the preview from the Windows Store, you have no idea the boundaries LIMINE has obliterated since. Try full text searching on encrypted documents. Sharing case files among trial team members. Exporting deposition video clips as MP4 files with cued evidence and closed-captioning. LIMINE is about to become the only software platform you will ever need for trial litigation, from the summary judgment hearing, to the appellate brief, and everything in between.
Stay tuned…
It has come at no surprise to me that one of the most frequent questions we are getting about LIMINE is whether it runs on Windows 7. The answer has been "it will, very soon." But I'm now able to make that answer a little more concrete by showing off the Classic Edition in action so you can see just how close it is to completion - and just how close it is in appearance and functionality to the touch-first Modern Edition!
(Disclaimer: These screen caps were taken on a Windows 8 machine, only because that's exclusively what I run except for testing purposes).
What's the first thing you notice? It's in a window of course! Back are the familiar minimize, maximize, and close buttons (albeit a bit more stylized than usual), along with the caption bar. By contrast, Modern Edition runs only in full-screen mode (unless you have the new Windows 10, which allows you to run Modern UI apps in a window as well as classic desktop applications). You can also resize the window to your heart's content, and the stage automatically re-sizes to maintain the aspect ratio of your display device.
Besides the fact that we're back in old-fashioned windowed mode, not all that much is different. And that's by design. See, we always knew we'd need to support Win7, but the question was whether or not the Modern Edition for touchscreens should be more of a lightweight presentation tool to be supplemented by a more heavy duty Windows 7-compatible application targeted toward IT professionals and veteran hot seaters. But then we thought, why make yet another clone of tools that are already very good at what they were designed to do? Instead, let's make something totally unique - a presentation-centered tool that's simple to use but powerful enough so that you don't need a separate one for database management. One tool, one (hopefully shallow) learning curve, and enough robustness to support 95%+ of cases. And the same user experience on any supported device - PC, tablet, magic wall, etc.
That decision necessitated making the Classic Edition as close as technologically possible to the Modern Edition. It wasn't easy - Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF, the technology driving the Classic Edition) and Windows Runtime (the engine underneath the Modern Edition) are very different, despite using the exact same programming languages and even much of the same API syntax. And some small differences are inevitable - if you use both editions, you'll quickly see that Modern has just a little more elegance and fluidity to it by virtue of the Windows Runtime's amazing graphics performance compared to WPF. But overall I think we've nailed it.
The one big difference is touch. Windows 7 can support touchscreens, but speaking as a programmer, the amount of hacking that would have been required to make Classic respond to touch gestures the same way as Modern would have been prohibitive and I'm not sure the results would have been all that satisfying for the small handful of potential users who are running Windows 7 on touch devices. So, at least for this initial release, Classic will not be responsive to any except the most basic touch gestures (e.g., tap a button). (That said, the new version of WPF is coming soon, and it promises to have improved touch support. So who knows what might be possible down the road).
To make up for the lack of touch support in Classic, however, we added something that's not currently in the Modern Edition that should appeal particularly to veteran trial support pros - keyboard shortcuts! These are still being tweaked, but the plan is to let you do as much as possible with the keyboard alone. For instance, hitting CTRL+SHIFT+L will automatically place you in Line Drawing mode - no need to double-tap the Drawing button to select the Line style. Hitting CTRL+F will bring up the Search box, where you can then type an Exhibit ID, hit Enter, and the results will appear in the Navigator. Ultimately, you'll be able to push a search result (or anything else in the Navigator) to the Stage with a key-press, cycle through the open exhibits on the Stage with TAB, and control their dock positions with arrow keys.
Now then, imagine this typical workflow. You have a trial with a senior partner who likes working with a particular paralegal as the hot-seater, and a junior attorney who wants to do her own presenting when she cross-examines her witness. Everyone is using the Windows 7 version in the office - the paralegal is getting ready to support the senior partner's verbal cues, while the junior lawyer is instructing the same paralegal on the documents and snapshots she wants in her witness folder for the killer cross examination (or maybe is adding them herself while the paralegal is not in the database). Before court, the paralegal makes sure that everyone's device is synchronized with the same database, which is as easy as copying a file folder. (EVERYTHING you put into LIMINE is imported into your case folder; there is no linking to external documents and no guessing as to where things reside). Or if they really want to get crazy, they can store the whole database on a thumb drive and just open it on any device as needed in court. Of course I highly recommend enabling encryption, and having a backup drive.
So, instead of a "pro" and a "lite" version like others have done, we settled on one software platform offering limitless possibilities in terms of devices and workflow patterns. That's what cross-platform is really all about, and I *think* is what Microsoft had in mind with Windows 8 (of course I can't speak for them). While the IT world is catching up to that vision, though, using LIMINE Classic Edition and Modern Edition together will let you realize it right now. Or at least very soon. ;)
Till then,
Peter Moore
Founder
Sign up to get the latest on sales, new releases and more …
© 2017 Legistek.
Designed by Out of the Sandbox.
Powered by Shopify
