Before I used Casedo [1] I worked in the traditional way – largely on paper and organising and re-organising evidence was a particular pain. One area which was particularly frustrating was evidence which relied upon images, since each time you reproduced the images they degraded. In trademark and design cases the images can be everything, so losing image quality was a concern. The final straw for me was preparing for a trial back in 2016 where I needed to prepare and paginate the bundle: as I didn’t have a print team or pagination software, I ended up spending days preparing bundles when I should have been preparing for trial. At that point I decided I needed to find a better solution, but I struggled to find anything that would fulfil my needs and fitted in with the work of lawyers.
Until I found Casedo. The more I have used Casedo the more useful I have found it to be. As well as using it to create printed paginated bundles and e-bundles (the newest version even creates the contents page and hyperlinks to the sections for you), I use it to create witness statements quickly and its user-friendly system means I can quickly drag in documents received from the other side and collate them into a single submission: previously I either had to print all the parts off and put them together, or flick back and forth between various attachments.
As Casedo has multiple viewing windows I can be reading the witness statement in one window and looking at the exhibit in the other, and I can add comments and notes electronically at that stage. Whilst I have only used it personally, I am sure it would be even better in a team setting.
Where I must keep evidence in page limits (such as at the UKIPO) the ease of putting documents in and taking them out of witness statements means I don’t get the issue of suddenly realising that I’ve created a witness statement and evidence which breaches the UKIPO’s rules.
I would say that using Casedo has chopped 30% off the time I used to spend putting evidence together, and as it stays electronic until printing is required, the images stay crisp. I am sure I would be aghast if I knew how much time I previously spent on bundling in court matters that I can now do easily with Casedo.
During lockdown I have also taken to using it to create bundles for UKIPO hearings to share with the other side and the UKIPO or Appointed Person – it has added no time to me but sharing a single PDF which is hyperlinked and enables all the parties to have the same references has been helpful and has drawn praise and thanks from the UKIPO and the other side. Clients are grateful for it as it has reduced the time spent on preparation, and I can easily send them copies of bundles so they can follow proceedings too. On a few occasions I have also used the fact it makes many parts of a bundle readable and searchable to help me find references during hearings.
I am so pleased to have found Casedo, and I am excited that other members of the profession can benefit from it. The product team has produced a brilliant tool which really fits well with our work, and they are always open to product suggestions so it will undoubtedly get even better in the future. If you work electronically (or want to) and want an easy way to handle and collate documents for cases, to prepare documents like witness statements that have lots of exhibits or to prepare bundles then I would strongly recommend Casedo. It has transformed the way I work, and I dare say you will find even more ways to make it work for you!
You can try Casedo for 30 days free of charge by clicking here: https://bit.ly/casedo1 [2]
Aaron Wood is a Chartered Trademark Attorney, trademark litigator and trademark advocate. He is Head of IP at Blaser Mills and a Casedo user since July 2019.