Pacing a Handwriting Marathon: A Notetaking System for Trials
As the world becomes more digitized, the role of handwriting as a necessity is diminishing. Doing something more than scribbling a few notes is rare, especially as an adult not attending school. But there is one place outside an educational setting where handwritten notetaking is a requirement. And in this one instance it is not just a brief thing, but a true marathon. I think that handwritten notetaking is absolutely essential to trialwork.
Some of you may know that I am a lawyer. Specifically, I am trial lawyer. I can’t merge your company with another, convince a zoing board to allow you to pave over baby ducks, nor can I write you a will or complete a purchase and sale agreement. But I can do a trial. I like bench trials quite a bit, but for me, there is absolutely nothing more exciting than a jury trial. Part argument, part performance, part strategic game, a jury trial is a massive undertaking. In most cases it represents months if not years of planning, research, and preparation. It is an all day affair usually with an hour and fifteen minutes of breaks. Often there is argument before and after the jury appears. And there is almost always homework. But the sheer joy and excitement of a jury trial is, as I tell new lawyers, the most fun you can have with your clothes on. I recognize that for the litigants it is often esoteric, excruciating, and boring and so it feels a bit perverse to say jury trials are fun, but surgeons find surgery fun, so I guess its okay.
My average jury trial has been four days of hearings with a day for jury selection and a day for jury deliberation. I have some that were shorter and some that were much longer, but a week is pretty representative of the time commitment. During trial keeping track of openings, closings, directs, crosses, evidence, legal issues, and client needs is a daunting task. But at the core of the process for me are a set of “trial notes,” handwritten notes that I review every night after the day ends and every morning before going to court. Those notes, couple with media coverage, give me a good sense of how others view the trial as it is going on. Keeping those notes has been a very difficult process. Refining my system has taken twenty years and it is always a work in progress. Before I get to the system, let’s talk gear.
Ideally I use a fountain pen. When I do a trial I have two pens inked up—usually my Lamy 2000 with the custom nib grind from the Nib Smith and my Mont Blanc Meisterstuck 146. I am a bit faster with the Lamy 2000 so that is my primary writer. The MB, thanks to its infallible start up, is a great back up pen. Either is good enough to do the main task. I used to use ballpoints and rollerballs, but the pressure needed to write clearly ultimately caused hand-crippling fatigue. In the beginning I would take about 50 pages of handwritten notes a day. Now, thanks to symbols and shortcuts, its down to about 35 pages for civilian experts and 40-45 pages for experts. That many pages with a feather-touch tuned nib is doable, whereas that same number with a ballpoint is probably not after day two. And be serious—always blue ink (for a host of reasons which I have articulated on the blog in the past). I usually run Pilot’s Iroshizuku Kon Peki or MB’s Pacific Blue. The MB Fineliner refill is a great alternative if you absolutely can’t stand fountain pens (you Philistine). I have a back up to a back up in my bag, which is usually the Tactile Pen Co. Small Side Clicky.
I also like the Circa notebooks from Levanger, as you can remove them easily and tear off the frilly edges quickly. If I have my preference, I opt for the Cornell style page layout, but the standard layout works well too. Of course, if you are taking notes, canary paper is the only way to go (it helps searching a file, as all handwritten notes are easily found in a stack of pages). Levanger’s canary is a little slick for fountain pens so it is a tradeoff between ease of writing (non-Levanger paper) and ease of storage and scanning (Circa filler paper).
So there are a couple things about the notetaking system itself. First, I didn’t want to use things that required a sequence (1,2,3, or A,B,C) because often the notes go for pages on a single topic and it bothered me to accidentally mislabel a sequence. It also makes reviewing the notes very challenging after the fact (did I miss a page, where is Witness A’s B section?). Second I wanted the system to be able to accomodate tiers of topics. Often in a trial you will have a witness that has a series of topics you have to cover, so that means I have a top tier with the witness’s name, then each topic under that witness’s exmaination (direct or cross). Under that I often have answers to specific questions, so that is three tiers. Sometimes they will go off on a tangent, so that is another tier. It total the system accommodates 5 tiers of topics and subtopics. In practice I rarely go below tier three. Finally, I wanted to have a way to note two different things—legal points and question notes. Legal points are typically objections. Questioning notes are when a witness says something when someone else is questioning them that I want to revisit when I get to question them. Making these two things really stand out is both helpful when thinking on my feet in the heat of trial and when revisiting the notes later.
All of this means that the system has three forms of notation: tier symbols, legal points, and question notes. With just these few elements and some spacing on the page, the system allows for a huge amount of information in a small space that can be written quickly. I also tend to convert questions and answers into one line of notes. So instead: “Do you work on the day shift? Yes” the note reads: “Works day shift.” Another tip to reduce space and speed up the process is that I use initals for all witnesses, so Homer Simpson becomes HS. There are a few non-content notes too, like the start and stop time for the period covered by the notes, the date the notes were taken, page of notes (which is added after the hearing or time when the notes are being made has concluded to prevent sequencing mistakes) and the client’s name. All in all, it is an efficient system for the grueling process of taking handwritten notes during a trial. It also works for hearings, client meetings, and other interactions related to the legal process.
Here is a single page sample with each part labeled from a fake case (these notes are unquestionably work product and so they would be privileged and confidential if they were from a real case):
The Cornell page layout is better because it allows the question notes to be more detailed and because it has a lot of the handwritten spaces already set up. That said, the standard layout works well and I like writing with a fountain pen on non-Levenger paper better. If the Levenger paper was more fountain pen friendly, I would buy a pallet of it. I have looked around and found other Cornell page layouts but they had terribly thin pages and were not available in canary. They also has poor perferations.
This system works well for me and has been developed over a period of 20 years. I am sure it will be further refined over time and it can be modified for all sorts of uses. And, of course, we all now that handwriting notes makes for better recall.
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