NovaMind Mind Mapping for Lawyers - Case Study
How I use NovaMind in my legal practice |
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Several months ago I purchased a copy of Novamind, having played with the demo version. I now use it for every trial I am involved in. I have enclosed a couple of examples to give you an idea of what I do with it (names have been changed to protect the innocent? ;-) ). The ones I have attached were done relatively early on and my skills have improved - lately there are hyperlinks to Appeal Judgments, Legislation and so on. I have to say it is a superb litigation tool. By categorising the issues I can get everything laid out on the map on one read-through of the brief. Previously I had to re-read statements, committal transcripts and so on several times in order to extract specific issues one at a time - or at best I would end up with dozens of loose bits of paper. Probably the best part is that I can see THE WHOLE TRIAL - that is, all of the issues at once. And the way they interrelate. I have never had any way of doing that before other then mentally, which takes an incredible amount of preparation. By taking the map to court (either printed on A3 or on the Powerbook) I can see exactly what I have to ask every witness, why, and how it all fits together. I'll give you an example. A few months ago I had to do 2 matters in XXX - a Summary Trial and then a drug committal. Because of time constraints I had to finish one and start the next one with only a five minute adjournment in between. When you work something up in your mind it is exceedingly hard to "change gears" quickly and get your brain around the next matter. It's a bit like doing 2 big uni exams without enough time in between. Because of the visual nature of mind mapping I was amazed by how quickly I could recall what the second hearing was about, and get up and running without the usual period where you get cross-contamination and confusion. As it turned out we ran out of time, got only half way through the second one and the rest of that committal has been adjourned until February. We have no transcript of the previous proceedings yet (sometimes you don't get one at all) and in ordinary circumstances (because of all the other stuff you do in between) it can take a long time to get back up to speed after any length of time. Sometimes you almost have to re-read the whole brief again. Anyway in the process of finding a couple of examples to send to you I opened up the map for this drug committal. Just by looking at it for less than a minute it all came flooding back. The time saving alone is astonishing. The one called Smith is an appeal I did a while back. There were 3 appeal points so I did a branch for each and took it from there. The adornments are very handy in finding where you need to look on the map in a hurry. I use the little people for witnesses - the ones in blue shirts are the police : p - little red books for legislation, the gavel thingy for judgment precedents and so on. Yin/yang is a little less intuitive - I use to indicate an argument I need to make (as in both sides of...). I has actually made preparation more enjoyable because there is the impetus to get the map complete and it is much easier to tell when you are finished. I use Novamind for other purposes as well but what I can do in Court with it is pure rock & roll. All of the lawyers who have seen me working off a map and the couple of Solicitors who have worked alongside me preparing trials with it have said similar things ("Wow", "what the **** is that?", "can I get it for windows" and so on). No exaggeration. Anyway thanks a heap. I am in the middle of mapping a fraud trial for tomorrow that got dropped in my lap really late this afternoon - yay! (sarcastic) so I better keep going. Please excuse any typos - I am sleep deprived. Cheers XXX, Barrister-at-Law |
