TechnoLawyer: Litigation/Discovery/Trials

Coming today to TechnoFeature: Oakland trial lawyer Jeffrey Allen of Graves & Allen took a leap of faith. Along with more than 20 million others, he bought an iPad. But unlike virtually all of those people, he wanted to see if he could use an iPad in every aspect of a trial — selecting jurors, giving opening and closing arguments, presenting evidence, impeaching witnesses with deposition testimony, etc. Did he succeed? Find out in this TechnoFeature article in which Jeffrey takes you on a whirlwind courtroom adventure involving more than 20 iPad apps. Not surprisingly, his journey starts in a conference room at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California.

How to Receive TechnoFeature
Our flagship newsletter never disappoints thanks to its in-depth reporting by leading legal technology and practice management experts, many of whom have become "household names" in the legal profession. It's in TechnoFeature that you'll find our oft-quoted formal product reviews and accompanying TechnoScore ratings. The TechnoFeature newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of Answers to Questions contains these articles:

Vivian Manning, How Burgar Rowe Uses Acrobat To Store Client-Related Email

Jon Lydell, Why I Don't Use Law Practice Software; Reviews Of Outlook And WordPerfect

Simon Laurent, Review: SmartDraw For Gantt And Other Charts

Cate Eranthe, Reviews Of Voice Memos And Dragon Dictate For IPhone

Henry Murphy, Review: PdfFactory And FinePrint

Don't miss this issue — or any future issues.

How to Receive Answers to Questions
Do you believe in the wisdom of crowds? In Answers to Questions, TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers. This newsletter's popularity stems from the relevance of the questions and answers to virtually everyone in the legal profession. The Answers to Questions newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to TechnoFeature: You may enjoy litigating but your clients don't. You see a chess game. They see bills. Expedited litigation offers a happy medium. Mediation and private trials conducted by retired judges have existed for a long time, but they're not always ideal. Led by California, states have begun exploring expedited one-day jury trials. According to complex litigation and class action trial support consultant Ted Brooks, the less time you have in court, the more time you need to prepare. In this TechnoFeature, Ted explains how to lay the necessary groundwork, technology and otherwise, for all forms of shortened litigation. Trial presentation aficionados take note.

How to Receive TechnoFeature
Our flagship newsletter never disappoints thanks to its in-depth reporting by leading legal technology and practice management experts, many of whom have become "household names" in the legal profession. It's in TechnoFeature that you'll find our oft-quoted formal product reviews and accompanying TechnoScore ratings. The TechnoFeature newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers software for processing electronic documents and creating load files (see article below), two online document storage and sharing services (one no frills and simple, the other with lots of features), an iPad app for trial presentations, and an IPad app for document review. Don't miss the next issue.

Process and Cull Scanned and Electronic Documents Faster

Listen up because you're about to learn everything you need to know about electronic discovery in a few hundred words. Step one involves collecting the discoverable data from the cast of characters (custodians/witnesses) who work for your client. This task is best handled by an expert who will create two forensically-sound copies of the data (think CSI except for data — the pros know how to prevent spoliation). One copy goes into a safe. The other copy gets sent to your law firm. Now that you've got all this raw data, how do you process it so that you can find all the privileged and relevant documents?

LAW PreDiscovery … in One Sentence
LexisNexis' latest release of LAW PreDiscovery enables you to process email and other electronic data collected for discovery faster, and convert it into a load file for Concordance and other litigation review platforms.

The Killer Feature
Processing data is like manufacturing. You start with raw ingredients and end up with a finished product. Accordingly, technology can have a dramatic impact.

LAW PreDiscovery's new Distributed ED Loader automates the creation of load files. It automatically detects the LAW PreDiscovery licenses on your network, and sends them data to process. You no longer have to manually assign jobs. Using the Management Console, you can monitor the various jobs. If a queue develops, you can assign priorities or purchase more licenses to speed up the processing.

Other Notable Features
LAW PreDiscovery removes duplicates, extracts metadata, uncompresses ZIP files, preserves email threads and attachments, and converts native files to TIFF format. You can take advantage of LAW PreDiscovery's search and OCR capabilities to cull obviously irrelevant material before creating a load file.

The new release of LAW PreDiscovery also features language identification. Thus, you can quickly see all the languages used in the data you've collected so that you can start recruiting the appropriate contract lawyers or translators for the document review phase that follows the processing phase.

You know about metadata, but what about hidden text? You're more likely to find a smoking gun in the latter. LAW PreDiscovery's new Hidden Text Detection technology identifies this material in Microsoft Office documents — for example, text inside shape controls as well as hidden paragraphs, spreadsheets, columns, cells, slides, etc. Documents with hidden text that appear in search results will contain a tag at the top alerting your document reviewers.

What Else Should You Know?
LAW PreDiscovery's revamped interface seeks to minimize the amount of training needed. As you would expect, LAW PreDiscovery works seamlessly with Concordance, but because it employs the EDRM standard, it creates XML load files for many competitive review products as well. Learn more about LAW PreDiscovery.

How to Receive TechnoLawyer NewsWire
So many products, so little time. In each issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The "In One Sentence" section describes each product in one sentence, and the "Killer Feature" section describes each product's most compelling feature. The TechnoLawyer NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to TechnoFeature: Even lawyers chuckle when they hear about a mistrial because a juror got caught conducting their own factual and legal research online. But it's not funny when it happens in one of your cases. Let's face it — jurors have always considered more than just the evidence presented. But before the Internet they didn't leave such an obvious paper trail requiring judges to declare costly mistrials. In this issue of TechnoFeature, Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Linda Giles provides some recent examples of rogue jurors, places this problem in historical context, and then identifies the likely cause of the problem as well as a solution. It's always a good idea to listen to the judge — especially one with more than a decade of experience on the bench.

How to Receive TechnoFeature
Our flagship newsletter never disappoints thanks to its in-depth reporting by leading legal technology and practice management experts, many of whom have become "household names" in the legal profession. It's in TechnoFeature that you'll find our oft-quoted formal product reviews and accompanying TechnoScore ratings. The TechnoFeature newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on May 17, 2011 in our free BigLaw newsletter. Instead of reading BigLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

While Exterro's April Fool's spoof on robots replacing lawyers by "eliminating up to 99.9 percent of all inefficient cerebral functions currently performed by highly paid attorneys, paralegals and technologists" proved humorous, those of you who work in litigation may have found it hit too close to home.

The buzz surrounding Predictive Coding has steadily increased. This eDiscovery technology, which essentially uses machine learning to automate part of the review process, is causing a lot of head-scratching in large law firms. I remember pitching an article to a legal technology editor ten years ago themed "auto-coding is here." The first question that came back to me was, "Is it really here?" I feel like many of you are about to ask same question about predictive coding.

My former colleague John Corey who is now Regional Manager at Recommind told me about how large law firms are responding to their predictive coding product.

"We are seeing the early law firm adopters put predictive coding through its paces and validate the time and expense savings," said Corey. "They also found, sometimes to their surprise, more accurate results. Once litigation departments realize that predictive coding optimizes rather than completely replaces human review, any concerns about defensibility evaporate. We're now seeing a broader adoption as firms realize that they'd rather benefit from predictive coding than compete with it."

Corey also told me that after working directly with large firm lawyers for many years, he has a very strong hunch that the early adopters most likely ran data through the traditional review process as well as the predictive coding process. Once they realized that predictive coding could be trusted, they converted 100 percent.

If you missed the link last year in BlawgWorld, Monica Bay interviewed two eDiscovery experts about predictive coding on her October 2010 Law Technology Now podcast entitled Crash or Soar? Predictive Coding.

A Court Docketing David Challenges the Goliaths

While the "big boys" are battling it out in eDiscovery, let's not forget about the small and nimble players in the legal technology industry. I've noticed a recent trend in which the "little guys" are landing the big deals. Why? Are law firms finally realizing they can get a better product, better customer service, and a better price by going with a less known company? Maybe so.

It seems to be true for American LegalNet (disclosure — a client of Edge Legal Marketing). The company has landed some noticeably big deals for its eDockets rules-based docketing and calendar system from McKenna Long & Aldridge, Baker & Daniels, and Fenwick & West — and these are just the firms willing to talk. Why have firms such as these spurned giants such as CompuLaw and Elite Calendar Manager for American LegalNet?

I caught up with Connie Moser, senior marketing director of American LegalNet (she previously worked at Elite), to get her perspective. "Having a cost-effective product in place to help with critical date management is essential for law firms that want to enhance workflow and minimize malpractice risk," she told me.

ALM Media Switches Teams

ALM Media, the parent company of American Lawyer, National Law Journal, and many other legal publications, announced last month that it has "reunited" with LexisNexis. ALM Media will shift its exclusive legal news content licensing from Westlaw to rival Lexis.com. ALM Media CEO Bill Pollak has the best take on the deal — not surprising since he's the ultimate insider. "West has been a solid partner for the past five years and this decision was not one that was made lightly," writes Bill.

Where will Thomson Reuters' West obtain its legal news for Westlaw going forward? Publisher Neil Squillante got the scoop and reported that Reuters and West have teamed up to deliver their own legal news and analysis.

In the Meantime, Plug in Your BioPorts

With corporate clients pressuring law firms to cut costs, the only path for doing so increasingly lies in technology. Exterro's "easy-to-install and hard to remove BioPorts (certified to be 85 percent pain-free)" might sound silly, but don't laugh too hard. Yesterday's technology pipe dream sometimes becomes tomorrow's reality (smartphones anyone?). As Michael Lewis once wrote, the future just happened.

Written by Amy Juers of Edge Legal Marketing.

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Many large firms have good reputations for their work and bad reputations as places to work. Why? Answering this question requires digging up some dirt, but we do with the best of intentions. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, BigLaw analyzes the business practices, marketing strategies, and technologies used by the country's biggest law firms in an effort to unearth best and worst practices. The BigLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published in our free TechnoLawyer NewsWire newsletter. Instead of reading TechnoLawyer NewsWire here, sign up now to receive future issues via email.

A New Search and Collect Pricing Model for eDiscovery

A litigator recently suggested that lawyers should treat electronic documents like conversations and thus eliminate their production during discovery. His joke served as a poignant commentary on the spiraling costs of reviewing increasing volumes of data, some of which such as Facebook Posts didn't even exist a decade ago when the famous Enron email messages first put eDiscovery on the map. To make matters worse, litigators not only face an ever-growing number of products to choose from, but a bewildering array of pricing models that are difficult to compare. Last week, a new product emerged designed to save litigants boatloads of money on eDiscovery.

PowerSearch … in One Sentence
DATAssimilate's PowerSearch is a desktop eDiscovery application with a unique pricing model that enables you to identify and collect relevant electronically stored information.

The Killer Feature
PowerSearch has something rare in the litigation software industry — a clever and memorable slogan: Cull before you collect. Its slogan underscores its unique pricing model.

You can download as many copies of PowerSearch as you want free of charge. So you can give everyone in your legal department or law firm a copy without having to crunch any numbers.

To use PowerSearch, you point it at a collection of electronic files such as an Outlook PST file, and then conduct searches to find relevant documents. Once you identify the documents you ultimately want to collect, you pay DATAssimilate only for those documents.

Thus, instead of paying to collect all of a custodian's documents even though you know that most will prove irrelevant, you instead pay after your review for only the relevant documents. Cull before you collect.

PowerSearch uses a token system. Each document you want costs one token. Pricing ranges from .05 cents to .001 cents per token (document) depending on how many tokens you purchase. The minimum purchase is 1,000 tokens (documents) for $50. By creating a business account in the token bank, you can share tokens among multiple computers. According to the company, PowerSearch can reduce your collection costs by 80% or more over traditional pricing models.

"We designed PowerSearch to give the legal industry an easy and affordable way to access data," DATAssimilate CEO Girts Jansons told us. "There is no cost to deploy or use the robust features of PowerSearch, and users pay only fractions of a cent for files they ultimately decide to save. We have received very positive responses from beta testers."

Other Notable Features
PowerSearch doesn't just search files, it indexes and searches through them fast. For example, Jansons told us that PowerSearch performed a complex search on those famous Enron email messages in less than two seconds. Before you can search, you must of course index. PowerSearch indexes across a 100 MB network at a speed of 500 files per minute. As an added bonus, the optional OCR technology converts document images to searchable text at a rate of 45 pages per minute.

DATAssimilate claims that PowerSearch requires minimal training. You just follow the navigation tabs through the workflow to select, index, analyze, search, and then save relevant files. Context-sensitive help provides best practices as you move through each step.

PowerSearch handles a wide variety of file types in their native format as well as file bundles such as NSF, PST, and ZIP. Other features include the ability to search within search results and filter your search results, generate reports, export using various options such as retaining email attachments and folder structures, and produce a defensible audit trail.

What Else Should You Know?
PowerSearch runs on Windows PCs. As noted above, it costs nothing to download and use. You pay only when you want to pull relevant documents from a data source. Learn more about PowerSearch.

How to Receive TechnoLawyer NewsWire
So many products, so little time. In each issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The "In One Sentence" section describes each product in one sentence, and the "Killer Feature" section describes each product's most compelling feature. The TechnoLawyer NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Originally published on April 26, 2011 in our free SmallLaw newsletter. Instead of reading SmallLaw here after the fact, sign up now to receive future issues in realtime.

I am an unabashed Apple fanboy. They say the first step to recovery is admitting the problem. I was in line at Wal-Mart the day of the iPad 2's release. While I've used the iPad extensively in my solo practice since purchasing Steve Jobs' magical device, I was finally able to put it through the paces a couple weeks ago in the field here in Gadsen, Alabama.

I recently filed a wrongful death case against several municipalities in Alabama on behalf of a client who lost his only son during a high-speed chase gone wrong.

My Investigation at the Scene of the Accident

I conducted my own preliminary investigation using my 16 GB WiFi iPad 2 and a number of supporting apps and gadgets, including a Verizon MiFi for an Internet connection.

Once on the scene of the accident I accessed my DropBox iPad app to pull up my client's file and compared the photos in there with the scene in front of me. The iPad shined in this endeavor as the two years that had passed from the accident to the lawsuit had not been kind to the accident site. The paint used to mark points of impact and the location of the body had nearly faded to oblivion, so my "fresh" iPad photos became my landmarks.

I used Voice Recorder HD with DropBox support to record a brief statement from my witness while simultaneously taking notes in Penultimate using a Kensington Virtuoso stylus rather than my pudgy fingers.

I used my Canon EOS Rebel T1i EF-S DSLR to take multiple photos of the scene. Then, using the EyeFi wireless memory card I loaded these files into my iPad for later review.

In conjunction with the MiFi, I was able to search the Alabama court system's database to see what kind of criminal record my witness sported in case I needed to perform damage control in the future.

Using Google Maps and an officer's statement of the chase, I retraced the route through the county while the iPad sat shotgun (I was able to watch the dash-cam video of the chase before heading out to "relive" the chase).

While following the chase path I received a call from my client stating that an interview I gave a local station was playing on the radio. Once at his office I used the iCab Mobile Web browser to locate the audio clip on the station's Web site and saved it to my DropBox account. This browser lets me do things previously only available on jailbroken iOS devices. I also used iCab Mobile to look up some slang that an officer buddy gave me regarding his opinion of the subject cop in my lawsuit. Even I didn't know what "high-speed, low drag" meant!

After my investigation I used the 30 minute drive back to my office to catch up on email and Facebook via the VoiceBrief app that speaks aloud your email and other information.

An Almost Perfect Sidekick: 90% Bill Gannon, 10% Barney Fife

To be fair, using the iPad was not without its cons. The major issue I encountered was the GPS support. As noted above, I have the 16 GB WiFi model. As I understand mobile GPS technology, Apple products rely on both the internal GPS radio as well as cell tower triangulation to provide the most accurate location fix for the user. Since my iPad has no cellular radio I was limited to the internal GPS to get me from A to B, which proved problematic.

Although it could easily find the address of a witness I needed to speak with, it struggled to find my current location to calculate a route. It insisted on using my last known address as the point of origin when in fact that was 30 miles away! Perhaps I found a bug that Apple will address in the future, but in the end I had to use my iPhone to get to my starting point. Once I set a land-speed record to cross the rural county to make my appointment with my witness, the iPad performed beautifully.

Another complaint is the amount of glare on the iPad's screen. I was outside on a sunny day and had a really hard time seeing the documents and photos on the iPad. I can live with this issue as sunglasses and anti-glare screen protectors can help.

In hindsight I could have used the iPad 2's built-in cameras to take video and photos of the scene. While the HD video ability is useful I'm not impressed with the still camera results. After a photo is blown up to fit the display it loses a lot of image quality. Knowing my photos may well become exhibits I opted to bring the big gun — my Canon Rebel. I could have watched the dash-cam video via DropBox, but streaming it would have taken forever. We've all wiped the blood from our ears after watching a YouTube video over a 3G connection! I recommend using the iPad's native iPod app synced from iTunes to load any videos you need.

Conclusion

I was pleased with the performance of my iPad for legitimate legal investigatory work. As an added bonus, after its debut in the field, the iPad 2 is now a bona-fide tax write-off.

Written by Gadsden, Alabama lawyer Clark Stewart.

Publisher's Note: The WiFi iPad lacks assisted GPS. If you need GPS functionality, buy the AT&T or Verizon WiFi + 3G model. — Neil J. Squillante

How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to TechnoFeature: An admission or other material on a Web page can serve as important evidence or help you impeach a witness. But people — especially the unethical variety — can easily change or delete Web pages. Also, the hard drive that houses a Web page can fail. Therefore, you should act quickly and capture Web evidence as soon as possible. But if you don't capture it correctly, you may find yourself unable to authenticate it in court. In this TechnoFeature, Web evidence collection expert Paul Easton explains the four steps involved in properly collecting and preserving Web evidence as well as software tools that can make these tasks easier. He also discusses an alternative method that takes much less time. Sooner or later virtually every litigator will need Web evidence for a particular case so every litigator should learn how to collect it in a defensible manner.

How to Receive TechnoFeature
Our flagship newsletter never disappoints thanks to its in-depth reporting by leading legal technology and practice management experts, many of whom have become "household names" in the legal profession. It's in TechnoFeature that you'll find our oft-quoted formal product reviews and accompanying TechnoScore ratings. The TechnoFeature newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of Answers to Questions contains these articles:

Fred Kruck, Review: Hasler: The Postage Machine No One Knows About

Pam Haidenger-Bains, Tip: Document Management For Email Within Outlook

Thomas F. McDow, Review: CaseMap

Janis Cross, Review: Samsung Moment (Android)

Theodore Borrego, My Dual Monitor Setup (Document Nerds Take Note)

Don't miss this issue — or any future issues.

How to Receive Answers to Questions
Do you believe in the wisdom of crowds? In Answers to Questions, TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers. This newsletter's popularity stems from the relevance of the questions and answers to virtually everyone in the legal profession. The Answers to Questions newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.