TechnoLawyer: Litigation/Discovery/Trials

You don't have time to track 100 business and technology magazines and blogs. We do. Below you'll find our latest discoveries.

Review: Two Weeks With An iPhone

Defending Avvo’s Right to Provide Information and Guidance to Consumers

Ball 6 on EDD: Six Articles on Electronic Data Discovery

Autonomy Buys Zantaz

Juris Joins LexisNexis

What's In Your Printer?

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.

Coming July 10, 2007 to TechnoFeature: Litigation is challenging. High-profile litigation is doubly challenging. Wouldn't you love a sneak peak into these big trials so you could learn from the trial team's mistakes? In this article, trial and technology consultant Ted Brooks draws on his experience in several high-profile trials to share the top five problems that can arise and steps you can take to prevent them from negatively impacting your own cases. Ted doesn't think you can guess which cases he's referring to — but even if you do, he'll never tell.

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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 June 26, 2007 to TechnoFeature: Organizing all the elements of a case may seem overwhelming — like a huge puzzle with too many pieces. That's where litigation support software can help. In this article, trial attorney and legal technology expert Bruce Olson reviews LexisNexis CaseMap 7 (CaseMap), the newest version of the popular case analysis tool. In particular, he looks at the new enhancements since CaseMap became part of the LexisNexis Total Litigator family. Whether you're an existing CaseMap user or new to litigation support software, you'll find something of interest in Bruce's comprehensive review.

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.

In today's special eDiscovery issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers a new email archiving and search solution, an eDiscovery software suite, and an online litigation document repository. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

Take Decisive Action
By Dennis Kennedy

Trying to reduce your or your client's litigation risk and eDiscovery costs? Looking for a way to easily and securely search and share email across your organization?

Recommind, best known in the legal community for its conceptual search and categorization software, recently launched Decisiv Email, which automatically categorizes "massive amounts" of unstructured email data. Decisiv Email employs advanced categorization and conceptual search technology to automatically tag, organize, and file email messages and associated attachments with virtually no user involvement.

Additionally, you can use Decisiv Email as an email archiving tool. Recommind claims that using Decisiv Email to store business records delivers up to 500% in storage savings over traditional email archiving systems while substantially reducing litigation risk and eDiscovery costs.

Fully integrated with Microsoft Outlook, Decisiv Email facilitates collaboration within an organization by accurately correlating email-based information with related information in email archives, content management systems, document management systems, records management systems and countless other information repositories. By automatically organizing and filing information as it enters and leaves the email system, Decisiv Email significantly reduces time spent sorting through email correspondence in search of specific data and allows for near real-time knowledge transfer.

Other notable features of Decisiv Email include automated tagging and filing of incoming and outgoing messages, semi- or fully automatic modes of operation, a virtually invisible filing system that can prompt the sender to file email messages, support for Microsoft Office documents, scanned documents, voicemails, and other popular formats, and integrated project management functions such as roles, project templating, and activity reporting.

Decisiv Email sells for $300 per user for perpetual licenses. Learn more about Decisiv Email.

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.

Coming June 21, 2007 to Answers to Questions: Christel Burris throws down the gauntlet in the everlasting Word v. WordPerfect debate, William Lloyd explains how a multiple monitor setup works, Philip Franckel reviews Dragon NaturallySpeaking and discusses the headsets that its creators use, Deborah Schneider reviews her experience using GoDaddy for email, and Roe Frazer offers a solution for easily finding gaps in Bates-stamped documents. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
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.

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers a consumer-friendly hard drive array, an online service for managing medical information used in litigation, and document comparison software that can compare anything to anything. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

Drobo Arigato Mr. Roboto
By Dennis Kennedy

What's the second most annoying aspect of hard drives after disk failure? Running out of disk space! With our office computers bulging from our own documents not to mention the documents of our clients, and our home computers experiencing a similarly expanding digital waistline thanks to music, movies, and photos, the traditional hard drive just doesn't cut it anymore.

But the world of storage beyond the hard drive is filled with acronyms like RAID, SAN, NAS, and other terms that are too complex for the average lawyer, leaving us between a rock and a hard drive.

Enter Data Robotics and its new consumer-friendly Drobo automated storage robot that manages data storage for you. It's designed to ensure that your data is protected and expandable. And it minimizes your need to understand the intricacies of data storage management.

Drobo is a USB 2.0 enclosure that houses up to four 3.5 inch SATA hard drives of any size and make you wish. You need not use all four drive slots initially. LEDs display the status of drives and their remaining capacity. If the lights are green, all is good. Red lights tell you to add or replace a drive. Yellow lights let you know that you are at 85% of capacity and it's time to add another drive or replace an existing drive with a larger one.

On your PC or Mac, Drobo shows up as one very large hard drive — up to 2 TB at which point it shows up as two hard drives. You use this space like a regular hard drive, but behind the scenes it mirrors, protects, and manages your data to provide redundancy in case one hard drive fails.

You don't have to select RAID levels, match hard drive sizes, or delve into network storage esoterica. Drobo's approach to data management speeds up data migration, switches you to other drives if a drive fails, and gives you quick access to new capacity when needed. Drives slide into Drobo without the need for special tools.

Drobo currently works with both PCs and Macs. Expect a Linux-compatible version later this year as well as a version with an eSATA interface. Drobo sells for $499. Learn more about Drobo.

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.

Coming June 12, 2007 to TechnoFeature: Years ago, discovery was pretty straightforward. But our increasingly digital world has changed all that. Many rules, procedures, and tools have evolved to tame the ever-changing e-discovery beast. In this article, attorney and technology enthusiast Jeffrey Allen discusses the ins and outs of e-discovery and how firms large and small can deal with new rules and requirements. Engaging in e-discovery is no longer a luxury. It's a necessity — in virtually every case.

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 June 14, 2007 to Answers to Questions: Yvonne Renfrew provides several PDF and TIFF Bates stamping options, Simon Laurent reviews Amicus Accounting, Carolyn Thornlow reviews Tabs3 and PracticeMaster, Kirby Knight explains how to use dual monitors with two computers, and Hugh Tedder advises a soon-to-be law student on which word processor to use. Don't miss this issue.

How to Receive this Newsletter
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.

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers two new online services that can help law firms with marketing and public relations, and a software program for working with deposition transcripts. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

Frequent Flyers
By Dennis Kennedy

Designing and publishing marketing materials is time-consuming and committee-intensive, resulting all too often in endless debates about color or word choices and unopened boxes stored in closets for years after being printed.

vFlyer has created an online marketing and distribution platform that could help you put an end to all those committee meetings — and with better results to boot. It offers a simple, template-driven way to create brochures, flyers, and other marketing materials, and an easy way to distribute your materials to a variety of online and offline audiences.

vFlyer offers many channels to reach your audience. You can distribute PDF or HTML versions of your flyers by email (vFlyer can import your email lists). You can print your flyers to send by mail or hand out. You might also take advantage of new online channels and distribute your flyers through Google Base, Oodle, Edgeio, and more, or post flyers to Craigslist and eBay.

VFlyer's Flyer Creator makes it easy to quickly create professional-looking flyers. Flyer Creator provides a choice of standard templates or you can customize your own. You can add photographs and embed URLs. In the paid versions, you can even embed videos. vFlyer also offers custom templates for eBay and Craigslist.

You can output flyers in a variety of delivery formats, including PDF (for printing or emailing) and mobile or text messaging formats. You can also create RSS feeds.

vFlyer also offers a number of "widgets" that you can use to place your flyers and other ads on your Web site or blog, or even on social networking sites. These widgets come in Flash and JavaScript formats. You simply generate the code you need and place that code on your site or blog.

vFlyer is available under a subscription model with pricing based on features and numbers of flyers that you can create. A free, ad-supported version gives you 5 active flyers. Paid subscriptions start at $9.95 per month and go up to $79.95 per month with discounts for annual subscriptions. Learn more about vFlyer.

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.

In today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, lawyer and legal technology legend Dennis Kennedy covers a lawyer-centric discovery program and two online document management solutions. Don't miss the next issue.

Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:

Discovery Easy Enough for Cavemen (and Simplicity-Seeking Lawyers)
By Dennis Kennedy

Those instant classic television commercials about car insurance so easy to apply for even a caveman can do it have me wondering what else cavemen might find easy enough to understand in today's world. Discovery? Probably not, but LexisNexis Concordance has taken great strides in that direction with the new version of its flagship discovery program — Concordance 2007.

Designed for lawyers, Concordance 2007 sports a "completely revised, highly intuitive interface" that produces faster data access, improved document searching, and streamlined e-discovery features. The new release also integrates online Lexis.com research and a "send to" function to share your discovery data with other litigation and e-discovery software tools, including LexisNexis's Total Litigator and CaseMap. You can use Concordance 2007 from your desktop, laptop, or the Web.

Concordance 2007 focuses on simplifying the discovery process while providing enormous data capacity. The new interface helps you better navigate and organize documents, and should result in reduced training time for busy lawyers and paralegals. The Import Wizard can quickly import email and attachments in their native format. You can import and manage up to half a terabyte of data and thirty-three million records in each database. Need flexibility? Concordance allows 250 customizable fields for each record and up to 12 MB of data (approximately four copies of War and Peace) in each field.

Concordance's Simple Search technology easily locates key phrases and documents for non-technical reviewers. More advanced users can make use of Boolean, fuzzy, wild card, relational, and concept searches. The Synonym Builder enables you to search less-than-perfect OCR documents. Once you find a term, you can highlight it, send it to Total Litigator, and perform research using your Lexis.com account. You can save and re-run searches on up to 128 databases at once. Other search tools help you search on related concepts and find duplicate documents.

Concordance 2007 also provides you with a rich set of review, analysis, and collaboration tools. You can use multi-level folders, add your own tags, and set up public and private folders to simplify document review and manage cases. New organizational management tools provide helpful statistics such as who reviewed a particular set of documents. You can also bulk send entire document sets from Concordance to CaseMap to help you analyze, manage, and strategize your cases.

Other notable features include transcript management, a wide variety of flexible reporting tools, and programmability for advanced users. Concordance also offers state of the art security. You can try Concordance 2007 for free for 30 days.  Learn more about Concordance 2007.

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.