TechnoLawyer: Litigation/Discovery/Trials

Coming May 20, 2008 to TechnoFeature: Almost every litigation matter involves email nowadays, so having a tool that can expeditiously and accurately search for relevant messages is a litigator's dream. In this article, legal technology consultant Brett Burney reviews Discovery Attender from Sherpa Software. The software aims to guide IT professionals through mountains of email, empowering them to filter out messages by keywords, date ranges, or specific addresses. Brett walks you through how the software works, and shares what he found helpful and what left him wanting more. Does Discovery Attender deserve a place in your litigation arsenal? Read Brett's review to find out.

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Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers dictation software for your BlackBerry and an accompanying online dictation service, an online service for retrieving medical records, and new electronic discovery software designed for in-house counsel in the early stages of a case or investigation (see article below). Don't miss the next issue.

Put the Cushy Back Into Corporate Counsel
By Neil J. Squillante

Being a corporate counsel used to be a cushy job. When litigation arose, you could have your outside counsel swing by to collect documents. Those days have ended. It's one thing to let your outside counsel rummage through file cabinets, but it's not advisable to have them rummage through your computers. Increasingly, that task belongs to you.

DigIT Technologies' DigIT Enterprise 2.5 enables your legal department to access to all electronically stored information throughout the enterprise, enabling you to quickly search for, find, and preserve data that may prove relevant to an investigation or litigation.

DigIT Technologies customizes every installation of DigIT Enterprise based on your specific needs. Once configured, it performs three core functions — Early Case Assessment, Custodian Mapping, and Full Custodian Capture.

Regarding Early Case Assessment, digIT Enterprise enables you to make decisions before you spend any money processing data. By running a few quick searches, you will know how much evidentiary data exists so that you can establish a case budget and strategy. digIT Enterprise also provides the requisite information necessary for the Meet & Confer requirement of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure such as the number of custodians, how much data each custodian has, and where that data resides.

While some software uses a single method for identifying custodians, digIT Enterprise employs a variety of methods for Custodian Mapping, including address, machine name, and integration with Microsoft Active Directory. You can also map email using particular fields such as the sender and the name of the mailbox.

Full Custodian Capture facilitates the preservation of all potential evidence belonging to one custodian in a single search. digIT Enterprise places all available information for each custodian into a "repository." You then apply search terms against each custodian's collection, and then export potentially relevant files to your review platform of choice for further analysis, tagging, and categorization. This approach ensures that no file is altered or deleted during discovery by any key custodians.

Learn more about digIT Enterprise 2.5.

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Published on Wednesdays, TechnoLawyer NewsWire is a weekly newsletter that enables you to learn about new technology products and services of interest to legal professionals. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Coming April 22, 2008 to TechnoFeature: In the world of eDiscovery, spoliation of electronically stored information (ESI) is a new and important concern. Looking at a client's ESI can be risky if you start opening and copying files from their workstation because you might "stomp on the data." In this article, trial attorney and legal technology expert Bruce Olson provides a comprehensive review of SafeCopy 2.1 Mobile by Pivotal Guidance. This software promises to safely copy ESI for subsequent review and analysis. Installed on a USB U3 device, SafeCopy 2.1 Mobile is intended to provide a mobile solution for use at client sites without the need to install the software on the client's system. Find out how SafeCopy fared in Bruce's busy litigation practice.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Tuesdays, TechnoFeature is a weekly newsletter that contains in-depth articles written by leading legal technology and practice management experts. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Coming April 17, 2008 to Answers to Questions: David Hudgens explains how to use dual monitors with a laptop and discusses whether a bigger monitor trumps dual monitors, Leslie Shear discusses fax-to-email security, Francis Jackson shares his thoughts on de-duplication technology (or the lack thereof) and a promising vendor entering this arena, Aaron Craft reviews Amicus Attorney Small Firm Edition, Amicus Accounting, and QuickBooks, and W. David Case reviews AirSet for online calendaring. Don't miss this issue.

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Published Thursdays, Answers to Questions is a weekly newsletter in which TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers (including you if you join TechnoLawyer). Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Coming April 15, 2008 to TechnoFeature: There are some things in life you can't choose — your birthday, your shoe size, who your daughter marries ... But when it comes to trial presentation software, the choice is up to you. Gulp. Trial consultant Timothy Piganelli understands that this choice can seem daunting so we asked him to provide his top ten tips for choosing trial presentation software. From features to stability to learning curve, learn what the modern litigator should know before taking the trial presentation software plunge.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Tuesdays, TechnoFeature is a weekly newsletter that contains in-depth articles written by leading legal technology and practice management experts. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

Coming April 8, 2008 to TechnoFeature: Apple's iPod has infiltrated so many aspects of our lives (music, videos, movies, television), so it comes as no surprise that it has recently crept into litigation practices nationwide. In this article, litigation consultant David Mykel walks you through the various ways in which you can turn an iPod into an effective ally in your litigation practice. He'll teach you how you can view exhibits, watch video deposition testimony, record voice notes, and even transfer files. If you've always wondered how you could write off an iPod as a business expense, this TechnoFeature article has the answer.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Tuesdays, TechnoFeature is a weekly newsletter that contains in-depth articles written by leading legal technology and practice management experts. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.

One of our favorite contributors, trial consultant Lynn Packer, posted a YouTube video two days ago that showcases his DepoDisplay paperless deposition system.

Lynn has written several TechnoFeature articles for us in which he recounted his struggle to modernize courtrooms in Utah. Therefore, it's encouraging to see his vision up and running, albeit not in a courtroom, but in a forward-thinking Utah law firm.

More impressive than the courtroom gear is the DepoDisplay deposition system, which features a large screen at the foot of the deposition table for displaying exhibits and two operator-controlled cameras for capturing all the action. Watching this video is like traveling forward in time to a deposition in 2015 (click here if you can't see the video below).

About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.

It's a Tie: Clustify and Kroll Ontrack

It's hard to pick one Best of Show in a category like electronic discovery in which the vendors outnumber the attendees. Okay maybe that's a slight exaggeration but the number of electronic discovery vendors significantly outnumbered vendors in any other category. Among the many contenders, I tip my virtual hat to a pair of companies that represent opposite (but equally important) extremes in this space.

Hot Neuron announced the release of Clustify, which uses both concept and literal search paradigms to eliminate "near duplicates" (a hot topic nowadays) and extract meaning from reams of eDiscovery information. The resulting output is displayed in "clusters" of related documents. Pricing is flexible as well.

Clustify exemplifies the trend towards keeping applications light and simple. Hence it runs on anything from a laptop to a server without sacrificing its raison d'etre — finding and sorting information.

Kroll Ontrack has gotten eDiscovery right as well. But if Clustify demonstrates what a lightweight, focused application can do, Kroll shows us that keeping a hand in multiple areas does not doom a company's products to mediocrity.

Born out of the insurance industry, Kroll has become a major player in the eDiscovey space by combining homegrown technology with strategic acquisitions. Its lineup includes software, search, and consulting.

Honorable Mention: Discover-e's Endeavour. Look for detailed coverage of these and other eDiscovery products in TechnoLawyer NewsWire.

Read more firsthand reports from ABA TechShow 2008.

About TechnoLawyer Trade Show Reports
Even in today's wired world, trade shows continue to play an important role. But not everyone can attend trade shows. Hence, our trade show reports, which bring trade shows to you. You can find our trade show reports here in TechnoLawyer Blog, and also in TechnoGuide, a free newsletter that also contains exclusive content. Learn more about TechnoGuide.

Legal Outsourcing Moves Beyond Document Review

Remember the early 1990s when outsourcing didn't apply to lawyers? Well you can forget those days because for the last decade outsourcing has become the name of the game for large discovery projects.

The theory is that firms shouldn't pay for an associate or paralegal here when they can have documents reviewed for less overseas. But where were all the legal process outsourcing (LPO) vendors at this year's show? Only one made the trip — SQ Global Solutions.

Of course it would be unfair to award one of my coveted Best of Show picks for that reason alone, so I spoke at length with company representative Tim Ninowski.

After many probing questions, I believe these guys have what it takes. Not only can they provide an instant discovery and document review department for law firms in need of manpower, but they have actually developed a lawyer ecosystem in their facility in Hyderabad, India.

The notion appears to be that if SQ Global Solutions nurtures an entire law firm (not just individual lawyers) overseas then it can handle nearly any size job on a temporary or long-term basis. In addition, the company provides services at a fraction of the cost of a full-time stateside associate or paralegal.

Yeah, it's kind of scary, but there's no point in burying our heads in the sand.

Read more firsthand reports from ABA TechShow 2008.

About TechnoLawyer Trade Show Reports
Even in today's wired world, trade shows continue to play an important role. But not everyone can attend trade shows. Hence, our trade show reports, which bring trade shows to you. You can find our trade show reports here in TechnoLawyer Blog, and also in TechnoGuide, a free newsletter that also contains exclusive content. Learn more about TechnoGuide.

Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers an email archiving and disaster recovery solution (see article below), a turnkey hardware/software paperless office system that works with any scanner or MFP, and a new 46 inch plasma TV for movie buffs and gamers alike. Don't miss the next issue.

Hold Everything
By Neil J. Squillante

Have you ever rummaged through a shoe box of old photos trying to decide which ones to have scanned and which ones to discard only to realize making case by case decisions is incredibly slow and inefficient? Chance are you'll just send the entire shoe box off for scanning.

Email archiving is similar. While most email archiving solutions encourage you to develop policies as to what to keep and what to discard, Forensic and Compliance System takes a different approach with its Cryoserver email archiving appliance — keep everything.

As a result, the company claims that Cryoserver is the only solution that has a complete record of all your email and attachments, including metadata. And because Cryoserver consists of a software-hardware combination, the company further claims that your data is collected in a forensically-sound and tamper-proof manner. The need for a litigation hold doesn't exist in a Cryoserver world because you're always holding everything.

When you first install Cryoserver, it can transparently offload email from Microsoft Exchange servers. Because of the volume of data Cryoserver stores, it provides robust tools for finding what you need in seconds for eDiscovery purposes or simply because you mistakenly deleted a message. You can access Cryoserver through your email program or a Web browser, both of which offer a familiar interface to reduce the learning curve.

Cryoserver offers protection against disasters through it's replication technology, which requires one or more Cryoserver appliances in other locations. Also, Cryoserver can scale from just a handful of email accounts at a small firm to more than one hundred thousand accounts at large corporations. Learn more about Cryoserver.

How to Receive this Newsletter
Published on Wednesdays, TechnoLawyer NewsWire is a weekly newsletter that enables you to learn about new technology products and services of interest to legal professionals. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. Please subscribe now.