Digital Trial Notebook Implementation: Practical Applications of OneNote, Word, Excel, Outlook and More

This session shows how to build a digital trial notebook in OneNote and Word, with a focus on structure, search, and document discipline. It covers the move away from OneNote for Windows 10, how to lay out a notebook so materials can be found quickly, and Word habits that matter in litigation: co-authoring, tracked changes, templates and styles, and cleaning metadata. It also looks at Copilot in OneNote and the Legal Agent in Word from a research-verification angle, explaining where AI output can support trial preparation and where it has to be checked against primary sources.

This session covers the day-to-day running of the trial notebook: tracking deadlines, collaborating, and preserving evidence across Microsoft 365. It explains what the new Outlook default changes for calendaring and add-ins, then walks through a dual-docket system that pairs Outlook with an Excel deadline calculator. The session closes with Microsoft Teams, treated both as a workspace for the trial team and as a source of discoverable evidence. Topics include how to set up channels and permissions, what preservation duties apply, and the ethics of transcripts and recaps that AI generates from meetings.