A story written by Hugh C. Wood, Esq
SpeakWrite is notorious for stories about assembling last-minute packets of material right before a deadline—and they’re incredible at it. So, today, I want to share a hero story about how SpeakWrite saved the day.
About 10 years ago when I was of counsel to a larger firm in the southeast, I got a call from one of the partners at about 7:30 pm asking me to look at a “motion to dismiss” that had been filed in federal court in a case that I was not currently on counsel.
An associate named Steve (adapted name) had recently left the firm and had left this motion to dismiss with the partner. Now it’s important to know that the timeframes to appeal in federal court are fairly short—some are as short as 21 days and have a 0 tolerance approach to late filing.
The case in question was a rather complex tort and the insurance defense team had filed a well-written motion to dismiss. There was no time to obtain an extension, and the partner was pretty panicked. There was about 18 hours max to completely figure out the case and respond to it.
Remember, I wasn’t counsel for this case, but when my partner called me and asked me to take a look I decided I would lend a helping hand. I asked him to send me all of the raw data, and I would see what I could do.
All of the information was sent over to me after dinner, so I put my kids to bed, napped for an hour or two, and then got up at 2 am to sort through the massive pile of information. I realized the answer to this case was going to be very complex.
“What am I going to do?”
It dawned on me that dictating my notes and thoughts would decrease the amount of time spent creating an actual document answer. So, I grabbed my recorder and took each pod of information and thought of myself as standing at the podium and simply dictated the information as though I was making the oral argument in opposition to the “motion to dismiss”.
After recording my response to the motion to dismiss I uploaded my 6 audio recordings to SpeakWrite. I probably uploaded them around 5 in the morning and SpeakWrite had it all back to me between 7:00 am and 9:00 am that same morning.
I strategically rearranged the transcriptions into an introduction, factual background, citations, and research and felt fairly confident with what I had to present—even though I was doing most of this on the fly!
I sent it to the senior partner at about 9:30 am. An assistant put together the material, worked on a draft and revisions, and was actually able to get a courier to the federal courthouse at about 3:30 pm that afternoon.
That case – which lasted for more than 2 years – eventually produced about three-quarters of a million-dollar payout.
I am relatively certain that had [the law firm] not taken action to resolve that motion to dismiss on the evening that I received it at about 7:30 pm, they would’ve been out of court.
[Without] the tools of SpeakWrite, I could not have turned that around overnight and saved the firm’s case and the client.
Author: Hugh C. Wood, Esq.
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