Court Note Taking Training
On January 2nd, the Support Committee conducted a training for the Court Notes program that will be running for the duration of the trials. Below, you will find a recording of the session, as well as a transcript and the slides used.
If you are interested in taking notes during court, please get in touch!
Introduction
Facilitator: Hello everyone, we will be talking to Eli, who is an attorney that has been doing a lot of work in the past on the Atlanta Stop Cop City RICO cases and the J20 cases. They are going to help us with how to take notes on courtroom proceedings.
If you’re interested in helping the Prairieland defendants, we have multiple upcoming court dates that you can help with. These are people we love and we want to show up for them. The Prairieland defendants are facing horrific pretrial detention, bonds of up to $15 million, and could potentially face multiple life in prison sentences. Their family and friends have endured a lot of repression by the US government.
The Trump regime wants to make an example out of our loved ones in jail for anyone who seeks to resist fascism in all its forms. So this case should be relevant to everyone, whether they know the defendants or not.
The defendants were arrested following a protest and noise demo outside of an ICE detention facility, showing detainees that they were not forgotten. Even amidst rampant ICE terrorism, the Prairieland defendants chose a love ethic, and being in the courtroom with them will assure that they feel loved and supported.
About Eli
Eli: Hi, I’m Eli. I got involved—I was charged with a felony at a protest back in 2008, and now it’s 2026, and I’m an attorney. I’ve been really involved in a lot of mass defense and court support cases since then. I’m also very logistics minded.
Court notes are a really, really important part of the process because, as people have probably noticed, rumors fly everywhere, it’s hard to know what’s going on, there’s a lot of insinuations. Defense attorneys need to know what’s happening, and it’s hard for them to know what’s happening and get advanced notice without having notes. Media is also really important. The state is using propaganda to try to paint movements in a certain light, and we can develop our own narratives.
A couple of housekeeping notes: one is that this talk is being recorded. I’ll be trying to keep an eye on the chat so that if people have questions, you can ask me. I’ll glance over at it every few minutes. If you’re having any technical difficulties, let me know.
Goals and Structure of the Note Taking Program
Intended Audience
Defendants and Attorneys: Attorneys can’t be in every courtroom, but often since these are unified prosecutions, the state and the feds share information. A lot of the time the narratives and theories that they’re developing come out in hearings, or discovery might come out in one hearing that an attorney on a slightly different case that’s still related to this matter might not have seen, which would be a discovery issue. It’s really important to know what’s happening in court, even for defendants and attorneys who can’t be there. It also helps us feel organized and strong.
Media and Social Media People: If we don’t know what happened in court, it’s very difficult to write a press release. It’s also difficult to run a campaign because people doing support need to understand the shape of what we’re doing—how to shape things and how to talk.
Supporters of Defendants: One of the major things to take away from court notes is: What is the next court date? Was there a change in the status of the case? Was there an important ruling that really improved or made someone’s position worse? It can also be useful to just give a sense of what was going on in the courtroom—did someone seem okay?
Program Structure
We are going to have shifts where people can show up and take notes in court. We’re going to have two morning and two afternoon shifts. The exact time the court starts, I don’t know, and we will email you about it.
This is going to be a very email-focused program, which might be unusual for some people like me who are used to conducting their entire lives over text. We will have some texting if you’re interested. But you’re going to share your contact info and your email and sign up for shifts.
It’s impossible to know exactly when shifts will be because when the morning shift ends depends on when the judge wants to declare lunch, which could be at 11 or it could be at 2. And when the afternoon shift ends depends on when the judge is done for the day, which might be at 2 p.m. or it might be at 8 p.m. So you should have some flexibility in your shifts. As time goes on, we should have a stronger understanding, especially during trial, of how the judge structures the day.
Whatever shifts you sign up for—and definitely feel free to sign up for an entire day—you should have some flexibility. You take notes and then you send them to the coordinating email, which will send it to the transcribers. The transcribers will combine the notes for their section of the day and share that with the team, including defense attorneys, media folks, and support people.
Electronics in Court
I don’t think it’s going to be possible for any of us to get computers into the courtroom. We’ve looked into it and it seems impossible. Not only that, it seems like they are likely to not let any phones into the courthouse at all. Keep that in mind as you’re getting to the courthouse—leave your phone in your car.
We’re looking for handwritten notes that are neat and as close to verbatim as possible. Don’t let that scare you. Everyone who took notes for J20 did handwritten notes. “As close to verbatim as possible” does not mean that you need to hand write every single word, which is generally a humanly impossible task.
When you get back to your phone, you can scan those notes using a phone app. There are many phone apps that work on all kinds of phone operating systems where you can just take a bunch of photos, one after another, of a series of pages, and it makes a long multi-page PDF. You can scan those using a phone app like Genius Scan and send it to the coordinating email, and then the transcribers will transcribe the notes and send them back to the coordinating email, who will then distribute it to the people who need that information.
Also, this is being recorded. The court note taking role is in person, but there’s also a transcription role that people who want to support remotely can do.
Comment from chat: “Any federal courthouse will have a metal detector and prohibit phones.”
Comment from chat: “The court hearings go extremely fast and so much jargon in my experience sitting on district court.”
Eli: It sounds like there’s no phones or electronics in either the federal or the state courthouse, and they will have airport-style security if you haven’t been to a courthouse before. Usually at the state courthouse you can normally bring your phone into the building, but at the last hearing that wasn’t the case. We’re going to send out an email orienting people the night before each shift, and if there’s any updates about phones or logistics, we can let you know then.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Before You Show Up
Get a grip on the case. Legal proceedings can be really confusing, so the more prepared you are, the better. Things are going to go by really quickly. Especially in a preliminary hearing like the upcoming one on the 8th, you’re stepping into an ongoing conversation where people are discussing documents. We will share the two motions that we know of that are being discussed in this hearing. If you have a sense of what’s going on, what the issues are, and who the people are, you’re going to be able to pick up a lot more information. You can also learn more about how court works, which is interesting—maybe some of you are thinking about going to law school someday.
Make sure you have supplies. Know how to get to the courthouse, how parking and security works, etc.
Make sure your phone has a working scanner app. Download one and then take a notepad and draw a couple of doodles and make sure that it works and that you can send it via email.
Check your email the evening before, then confirm that you’re coming in. Review the abbreviation sheet.
Note: Sometimes court doesn’t happen. Even in the middle of a trial, sometimes someone’s sick, all kinds of stuff happens that might result in court not happening. One incentive to actually open that email inbox and confirm is that you might not need to come in the next day at all. Especially before a trial starts or preliminary hearings, these things get pushed all the time.
When You Show Up
- Bring multiple pens
- Legal pads work well for this use case, but any sort of notebook will work
- Don’t bring contraband—it’s good to think and make sure you don’t have anything weird
- Try to find other note takers, friendly attorneys, people who might know what’s going on—especially because when you send out your updates, it’s useful to have other people to check your understanding with
Taking Notes
It goes really fast. This is why it’s good to be prepared. It’s good to develop some kind of shorthand-ish thing. And it’s also good to be gentle with yourself, because it will go faster than you think.
I’ve definitely had experiences where after a hearing, there were five or six support crew people there, none of whom were the attorneys on the case, and all of them were sort of confused and mistaken about what had actually happened in court that day. So it’s at least good to check with one another. It’s good to note if you’re unclear on what actually happened. If you can talk to the defense attorney, that would be helpful, and you can also try talking to the court clerk.
The more you capture, the more info everyone will have to work with, and even if it seems nonsensical, as you take these notes, you can pause from trying to do these verbatim things to do the following two things that will be the most important to sending out updates:
- Underline decisions or rulings and dates
- Star juicy quotes – If someone says something that seems really significant, try to get it word for word and star it. This way transcribers and people reviewing the notes can see—their eyes can jump over pages of maybe confusing notes and get to things that are juicy.
After Court
Key questions to figure out:
- Did the judge make any rulings? If so, what were the rulings?
- Was there a question posed to the judge where they’ll make a ruling later?
For example, one of the motions coming up is to quash a count of the indictment. The judge might say yes (extremely important), they might say no, or they might say “I’ll consider” and give a timeframe for their ruling. Having a strong understanding of that is useful. Also, judges might say they’ll have their ruling at such and such a time and be completely lying—which is what just happened with the Stop Cop City cases. Four months ago, the judge said “I’ll have my ruling out tomorrow or maybe the next day,” and then it just came out on December 31st. So judges are mistaken about their own capacity.
Other questions:
- When are the parties next expected in court?
- Can defense counsel help you understand what happened?
- Is there someone from the NLG or a local law clinic who can help?
- Can you ask the court clerk about upcoming dates and simpler things?
Court clerks are not cops. You can talk to them. They are unlikely to get angry at you if you’re polite to them. In fact, it’s a good idea to be kind to them. If anyone finds a friendly, helpful face, we can put those notes into the orientation doc.
Writing the Summary Email
Immediately after you leave court, get your phone and send an email with the following items:
- Your scanned notes
- Any decisions or rulings
- Juicy quotes
- Any reflections or incidents—Were people harassed by law enforcement? Was the court clerk really nice? Any sort of thing that conveys what was happening that you think is important or should go to the orientation docs.
If you can’t write that email in a timely manner because you’re in a rush, it’s better to just send notes than write out this whole email. But it’s best to do the whole thing.
Comment from chat: “In past court watch, it was also important to watch the jury.”
Eli: It is a good idea to watch the jury. It might be good to suggest that one of the two note takers keep more of an eye on the jury. There are also pauses, especially at dramatic moments, where the jury might have a reaction. Lawyers are likely to pause. It’s a good idea to keep an eye on them, especially if your hand needs to take a break.
Tips and Tricks
Preliminary Hearings
They go really fast. There’s a lot of jargon. They are resolving issues that have to be resolved before the trial even happens:
- How they’re going to pick the jury
- Whether certain evidence can be presented or not
- Whether there’s discovery
- Whether the court can even hear the case
All of those things are discussed with a lot of jargon, as opposed to a normal trial where information is being presented to a jury, which is a combination of laypeople.
State court can also be more challenging than federal court because sometimes attorneys are given less of a chance to argue their motions, so it’s harder to understand what’s happening. In federal court, it is substantially less likely that an attorney would not be given an opportunity to make their argument and be heard. Things can be fast in state court. If it’s hard and dispiriting, don’t let that stop you from coming back.
Tip for preliminary hearings: If you’re losing track of what’s happening, focus on what the judge is saying because the judge is more likely to earmark the point where you’re transitioning to discussing a new issue and is likely to say a decision. If things feel overwhelming, the judge is probably the best person to pay attention to.
What Does “Close to Verbatim as Possible” Mean?
If you hear the same case name or another word that happens over and over again, it can be useful to write down that case name verbatim. At least an attorney will understand what was being discussed and why it would be relevant, even if you just spell it phonetically.
When it’s argument and there aren’t really punchy lines or decisions, you can try to take down what you can. Try to understand the gist. If it feels easier to capture words or small phrases, do that. If you feel like you understand the gist but writing down what people are saying when they’re talking really fast is hard, you can try writing down the gist.
Pacing
In a jury trial or an evidentiary hearing, often the direct exam (when the prosecutor is asking a witness questions) might be faster, very formulaic, rehearsed. But then in the cross exam (when the defense attorney asks questions), they might pause more and wait more to answer, so you might get a break.
Capturing Legal Vocabulary
Charges are made out of elements. When the state charges somebody with, for instance, destruction of physical evidence, those words—destruction, physical, evidence—have really specific meanings that are formulaic terms.
There are words lawyers use that mean they’re saying a very specific legal thing. “Vague and overbroad” is one that might mean they’re making an argument about a specific set of legal arguments. If you capture some of the vocabulary words being used, especially if you hear them used repeatedly, then an attorney would be better able to understand what’s happening, even if you’re not sure why the word “overbreadth” is being used over and over again.
Abbreviations and Symbols
We’re going to have a cheat sheet with terms that will come up repeatedly—like the charges, the different defendants in a multi-defendant case—so you don’t need to write those out all the time.
Standard court note taking symbols:
- π (pi) – for the prosecution
- Δ (delta) – for the defendant and defense attorney (usually clear from context)
- J – for the judge
It’s a good idea to add periodic timestamps approximately every half hour, so transcribers can line up both sets of notes and people can stay oriented to how far into the hearing they are.
If you find yourself using the same words over and over and wanting to abbreviate them, you can add a key, and we can update the cheat sheet.
Court Decorum
Dress code: Wear something decent. It can be business casual. It can be clean jeans and a shirt. Just don’t wear things that are provocative.
A note on looking alternative: I’ve had dyed hair, and I’m also visibly non-binary. I hear these dress notes and feel self-conscious. But in my experience, it’s 100% fine to just be a person who looks fundamentally alternative. Don’t feel like you shouldn’t go to court because you look alternative. A lot of people who come to court for regular criminal charges look alternative in some way. Law students look alternative. Judges’ children look alternative. All kinds of people look sort of weird. It’s not disrespectful to look queer or to look strange in some way.
What’s important is to be respectful. Judges will take it as disrespectful if you wear a shirt that says ACAB on it. But judges don’t take it as disrespectful if your hair is blue.
Situational awareness: There might be media with cameras. Probably don’t talk to the media. Definitely don’t talk to them on behalf of anything you can’t talk on behalf of. There could be surveillance, and there could be harassment. Historically, court support efforts have been harassed by right-wing people. For J20, we were mostly harassed by the main detective on the case staring us down and grumpily stomping in front of us. It wasn’t a big deal but it’s good to know if that happens, so that other people are like, “Oh yeah, this guy’s going to glare at you and stomp at you and it’s kind of funny.” So it doesn’t take you by surprise. This is the sort of thing we can put in the notes.
Really, really important: Don’t talk to jurors, especially not about the case. If you have an incidental interaction—like someone drops a pen and someone picks it up and hands it to them—you can say thank you. But don’t talk to them in a substantive way where anyone surveilling what was going on could say that you were harassing them. Don’t harass the jurors. Don’t even let anything happen where you could be perceived as harassing or influencing the jurors.
Q&A
Q: Why should you focus on the judge at the preliminary hearing? What do you do when focusing?
A: It’s really easy during a preliminary hearing to experience sensory overload. Things are going by too fast and you’re just not ever catching a whole entire idea. When that happens, you can kind of take a break—it’s like when you play a video game and you’re messing up. The judge can help you get back on track. When you’re focusing on the judge, you can take notes on what they’re saying. What the judge is saying is probably the most important content, and it might help you get back on track.
Q: If notes are partially in shorthand, should we transcribe into regular notes before sending?
A: My understanding of regular shorthand is that it’s unreadable. If you can’t add a key that would make the notes legible, then yes. But if you’re just writing abbreviations that are probably decipherable, no.
For example, in Atlanta, Peachtree Street comes up all the time, so someone could just write “Pch Tr St.” That would almost certainly be enough. And if that’s being discussed over and over, you could probably abbreviate it to PS. You don’t need to copy that out. You can transcribe your own notes—if it would be faster for you to just fully transcribe it, that makes sense. If your notes are illegibly in shorthand unless it’s to someone who knows shorthand, then probably either transcribe it into regular notes, add a key, or just do the transcription yourself and tell the other person they don’t need to do the combination.
Q: Are the notes compiled for various cases available in an accessible place for public viewing after being emailed?
A: The answer is no. For Cop City, there wasn’t a thing that maps directly onto this process because there were so many lawyers that could have their computers in the courtroom and take legal notes to share—people would have a collaborative Google Doc where multiple people would be taking notes. It’s just a different setup. The J20 notes—I started considering sharing them earlier today. I’ll definitely share some. I’ll consider sharing a lot of them. Only the summaries went out over a Riseup listserv. I’ll make sure it wouldn’t violate anyone’s expectations and strip all the metadata.
Whether it makes sense to put all of the summaries in a public place is sort of up to the crew. My guess would be no because people will turn these longer transcripts into something a little punchier to share.
This Specific Hearing
There are two motions I would recommend that you review. We’ll send these out in the orientation packet.
Case Details
- Preliminary hearing: January 8th
- Trial date: January 12th (probably a few days long)
- Defense attorneys: Frank Sellers, Dustin Hoffman, and McCall Hoops
- Defendant: Dario Sanchez
- Judge: Bosworth
- Charges: Hindering the prosecution of terrorism; Tampering with or fabricating physical evidence
Motion 1: Motion to Dismiss the Indictment
If this motion were granted, that would be really great for our defendant. I recommend reading it. It’s broken up into sections.
First argument: The constitution entitles us to notice before a criminal proceeding, so we can know what we’re defending ourselves against. You can’t just arrest someone and their trial starts and they don’t even know what it is.
This motion is only going to talk about the indictment and the words written on the indictment. They’re not going to talk about evidence or anything learned outside the indictment. They’re saying the indictment itself is fatally flawed—also what’s happening in the Cop City RICO case, where it just worked, so fingers crossed.
The way the indictment is confusing is complicated. Basically, the statute this person is accused of violating references another statute that references another statute. Whether it’s a felony or misdemeanor depends on this unknown crime within a crime within a crime.
Two key arguments:
- That’s not enough information to defend yourself
- This is a really big deal: The attorney is arguing it’s not clear that this is a felony. This court can only hear felonies. If the indictment doesn’t specify it’s a felony and it could be a misdemeanor, then the court literally wouldn’t have jurisdiction to hear it because that’s for a different court. Lack of jurisdiction is one of the things where a judge really will sometimes consider dismissing a charge.
Second count (tampering with physical evidence): The allegation is more or less deleting chat logs. Chat logs are non-corporeal, which means they’re not physical. This motion is fun because it’s a little sassy—it defines “physical” in multiple dictionaries.
Motion 2: Compelling the State to Comply with Discovery Obligations
There’s been basically no discovery. There are 104 pages of PDF. Usually there’s way more—all kinds of subpoena responses, etc. So there’s definitely more stuff going on with this person’s case, and the defendant has not received it, which means it’s really hard to defend against.
In the prayer for relief, they say: The court should compel the prosecution to provide the discovery, and if they don’t do it immediately, exclude it at trial and don’t let them use it. Or hold them in contempt of court.
Update from facilitator: After this motion was submitted, the prosecution revised their indictment to address some of the points but not all of them. The defense is still working on revising their motion.
Eli: Dang, I’m kind of surprised they can amend their indictment without pushing back the court dates, but anyway, all right.
Closing
We’ll give you some key links and send them to you in an email. This is the end of the slideshow.
If you have any interest in being a note taker or transcriber, you should click on the Cryptpad link and fill it out. We recorded this training, so if someone else is interested, we’ll probably have a link to that video.
Be a note taker. You learn things. It’s supportive. It helps the defense. It helps the community. And it’s a really useful skill.
Additional Discussion
Comment: I think it might be helpful, especially if we’re doing jury watching, to do a brief class in micro expressions or something, so that we can monitor how the jury is responding to specific information and figure out if the defense needs to target specific jurors that seem unconvinced.
Eli: That’s a good idea. Maybe those of us with bad handwriting can look at the jurors and think about how they seem to be feeling because that’s a less speed-writing exercise. As a person with bad handwriting, I write in all caps.
Before this first trial, assuming it happens on the 13th [correction: 12th], like we think it will, that might be especially useful if it would be useful to the attorney. For the second case with more attorneys, some of those attorneys would be interested in receiving that information. But on the other hand, they’ll be a little more on top of it because there will be so many of them, and a lot of them will be able to listen with one ear and watch the jury with the other. Especially in the summary email where you’re writing how stuff happened, if you have a sense of what was going on with the jury, convey that sense.
Also, we definitely want to write down the backgrounds of the jurors. The day they do jury selection, writing down who the jurors are, what their answers to questions are—that’s really useful. And sometimes there will be macro expressions on the jurors’ faces too. They might be rolling their eyes, they might be crying.
Comment: I missed the first 20 minutes, so forgive me if this has already been said, but when I’m doing court notes—as a messy handwriting person—what I try to do is think about the broader arc of what the conversation is instead of writing down every law and statute because as a layperson it doesn’t really mean much to me. Sometimes you get lost in the sauce of the details—this happened with one of the last hearings with Stop Cop City where they talked about some issue for 45 minutes. But it didn’t feel that hard to tell back to people if you just focus on the bigger picture as opposed to being totally right about every single detail. That’s been my thing that I try to carry with me when I’m taking notes.
Eli: Yeah, if you’re in a position where you understand what’s being said, it’s good to write down the gist. Quote as close to verbatim as possible, pausing for juicy quotes. If you don’t understand what’s being said, the emergency plan: note if they keep saying a case name over and over, like if they keep saying “Brady.” Note the broad arc, which will probably be something about there maybe being evidence that is exculpatory (good for the defendant). So you’ll notice they’re talking about how there might be evidence that would be good for the defendant—that’s the word exculpatory—and you can write down that arc. But then if you hear the same case name over and over, you could write that as a bullet point too.
Eli: All right, it’s 8:58. Everyone gets two minutes of their life back. Thank you all so much.
All: Thank you so much. Thank you.
This document was formatted from a recorded training session.