Deposition Summaries – Embracing AI

Fortz Legal
4 days ago
4 min read

By Jason Sluyter

AI deposition summary of a legal transcript

One of the most common questions we receive when speaking with attorneys revolves around AI (Artificial Intelligence). Built on our mission statement:

Our mission is to provide passion-filled and creative solutions to our clients’ many time-sensitive and diverse needs through our investment in people, technology, and the best resources in the industry.

Fortz Legal is committed to deliver cutting-edge technology solutions to our clients, and one of our latest services is deposition summaries.

A deposition summary is defined as a shortened version of a deposition transcript that highlights the most important testimony, facts, and evidence. It helps attorneys quickly review key points without needing to read through the full transcript.

At Fortz Legal, our legal-specific deposition summary software is based in the United States and is SOC 2 Type II certified and fully HIPAA compliant. With 155 real-time security controls, it's more secure, far more reliable, and actually gives you a usable legal work product—not just AI output.

In a recent lunch-and-learn presentation, I was asked to compare our deposition summaries to common AI services in a side-by-side analysis. It was a great idea! Below, we investigate the comparison.

	Fortz Legal	ChatGPT / Claude / Gemini
Core Legal Workflows	Designed for litigation tasks like: · Comparing witness testimony · Finding contradictions · Building timelines · Generating impeachment strategy	Manual prompting and inconsistent results · No legal workflow built in · No consistent citation format · Provide answers, but you have to trust it
Citation Precision	Every answer includes exact page & line citations to the transcript	May reference sources, but not consistently at page/line level
Source Traceability	Click a citation → jump directly to the transcript	Limited ability to trace responses back to exact source locations
Evidence Verification	Word-level highlighting shows the exact quoted testimony	No built-in system to verify quotes against source text
Reliability in Real Cases	Designed for verifiable, defensible legal analysis	Hard to validate or rely on in real cases
Document Scope	Ask questions across up to 100 transcripts at once	Typically limited to a single or handful of documents at a time

In summary, Fortz Legal shows you exactly where the answer came from (citations directly to the transcript). ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or any general AI tool simply gives you an answer.

Fortz Legal's security is the piece that changes the game for litigators. Your data stays in a private, legal-grade environment. With ChatGPT, that’s not something you can guarantee. The data encryption alone is a huge game-changer that provides a secure work tool with the peace of mind that comes with it.

Fortz Legal	ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc.
Private, Isolated AI Environment – All AI processing occurs within private, isolated infrastructure, keeping litigation materials separate from public AI systems.	Often operate on shared, multi-tenant AI infrastructure designed for broad consumer and business use.
Zero-Training Guarantee – Client documents and work product are never used to train AI models or sold to third parties.	Data handling policies vary by provider, product tier, and customer settings, requiring firms to evaluate configurations carefully.
Built for Confidential Legal Matters – Designed specifically for privileged, confidential litigation materials and matters subject to protective orders.	General-purpose AI platforms are not specifically designed around litigation workflows, privilege concerns, or protective-order requirements.
Enterprise-Grade Compliance & Security Controls – SOC 2 Type II certified, HIPAA compliant, monitored through 155 real-time security controls, with encryption at rest and in transit.	Security and compliance capabilities vary by platform, subscription level, and deployment model.
Data Ownership & Controlled Retention – Clients retain ownership of uploaded materials and AI-generated output, with defined retention and deletion controls.	Data retention, storage, and governance policies differ by provider and may require additional review before use with sensitive legal data.

In summary, Fortz Legal’s deposition summaries fits into your workflow quickly instead of creating more work.

Uploading a transcript into ChatGPT is like pasting documents into Google Docs and calling it a case strategy. Our deposition summary software is built for litigation: it organizes, analyzes, and connects everything in a way that actually moves your case forward. So yes, you can use ChatGPT. But you’re doing it manually, without guaranteed security, without citations you can rely on, and without the ability to analyze multiple depositions together.

The second piece that separates Fortz Legal and our deliverable is the interrogation feature. Attorneys can fully load individual or full case exhibits and transcripts, and they can begin to ask questions in preparation for cross-examination at trial. For example, Fortz Legal can provide the 10 best impeachment opportunities within the transcripts, with proper references already provided. This allows unprecedented efficiency and flexibility.

Fortz Legal gives you all of these tools instantly, in a secure environment, with outputs you can actually use in practice. That’s why firms with experienced litigators are willing to pay for it. Most firms experimenting with ChatGPT still end up double-checking everything manually. Fortz Legal eliminates that by giving you cited, verifiable answers across all your transcripts at once and does it in a secure environment you can actually trust with client data.

While our competitors are commonly charging $150–$250 for deposition summary products, Fortz Legal is currently charging less than half of that. Demonstrations are available upon request. For more information about deposition summaries from Fortz Legal, please contact us at: