practicehacker

43% of litigators who participated in a recent ABA survey say that they use litigation support software. As for the 57% of you wondering what exactly litigation software is, this is your lucky day. The term litigation support software refers to an entire subgenre of database software for storing, searching, and reviewing discovery and evidentiary material. Way better than manually going through a physical file, that’s for sure! Here’s a helpful chart produced by the ABA of the different litigation software out there. For more information on the respective companies and how their software can facilitate your your litigation practice, take a look at the websites below and decide for yourself (this applies to both the 43% of you already familiar with the systems as well as the 57% of you who may be interested in making the switch):

1. Anacomp CaseLogistix
2. Lexis Nexis Concordance
3. ILS Edge
4. iCONECT
5. ImageDepot
6. IPRO eReview
7. Lexbe
8. MasterFile
9. Nextpoint
10. CT Summation iBlaze

“The practice of law is, has been, and will continue to be a collaborative process” according to Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell, authors of The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together. True enough. And collaboration in the Internet Age is not what it used to be. In their book, Dennis and Tom have compiled a guide for lawyers who want to keep up with current tools and methods of collaboration that take advantage of the technology. For example the book discusses

• Document collaboration in a lawsuit
• Internet meetings and file-sharing
• E-mail productivity including GTD
• An overview of the Web 2.0 phenomenon
• Strategic planning using technology

With an-easy-to read-format, short chapters, and full glossary and index, in addition to a complete list of tools and resources, The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies is exactly what it claims to be.

This month’s installment from Cybercontrols is about the E-Discovery Pilot Program run by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.  The Pilot runs from Oct. 1 ‘09 to May 1 ‘10 and is intended to motivate informational exchanges between counsel relating to electronically stored information (ESI) through a proposed standing order that select district judges, magistrates, and bankruptcy judges in the Seventh Circuit have already agreed to use. The principals set out in the proposed order go beyond the 2006 ESI amendements to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to include subjects such as

Zealous Representation. Principle 1.02 specifically addresses the zealous representation excuse for obstructionist behavior – the principles state that “An attorney’s zealous representation of a client is NOT compromised by conducting discovery in a cooperative manner.” (Emphasis added)

Proportionality. Principle 1.03 calls attention to Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(2)(C), which permits objections to discovery requests where the burden or expense outweighs its likely benefit considering such things as the resources of the parties and the amount in controversy.

Meet and Confers. Principle 2.01 specifically references Fed. R. Evid. 502. If the pilot project can find a way to minimize the amount of attorney time spent in pre-production privilege reviews it would have made a huge contribution to achieving the overall goal of securing the “just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of every action.”

E-Discovery Liaison. Principle 2.02 contemplates the appointment of an e-discovery liaison for the purpose of meeting, conferring or attending court hearings on e-discovery issues. The liaison may be an attorney but can also be a third party consultant or an employee of the party. The liaison needs to know or have access to the people who are familiar with a party’s electronic systems and capabilities, as well as the technical aspects of e-discovery

Preservation. Principle 2.03 explicitly disfavors broad requests for preservation and encourages the exchange of specific information to help determine appropriately specific preservation agreements.

Scope of Preservation. Principle 2.04 covers the scope of preservation. 2.04(b) requires a party seeking information regarding the other party’s preservation and collection efforts to confer with the other party before initiating such discovery. 2.04(d) enumerates types of information that would NOT ordinarily be preserved, e.g. deleted, slack, fragmented or unallocated data.

Identification of ESI. Principle 2.05 encourages parties to discuss such things as treatment for duplicative ESI, filtering based on file type, date ranges, etc, and use of keyword searching, topic or concept clustering or other advanced culling technologies.

Production Format. Principle 2.06 states that ESI and other tangible or hard copy documents that are not text-searchable need not be made text searchable, meaning, evidently, that scanned paper documents would not need to be OCR’d.

Education. Principle 3.01 states a judicial expectation that counsel will be familiar with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure governing electronic discovery. Considering that the ESI rules have been in effect for three years as of December 1, 2009, and they were much publicized prior to their adoption, that hardly seems unreasonable or overreaching.

Seventh Circuit E-Discovery Pilot Program: 7th Circuit E-Discovery Program

CyberControls E-Discovery Request Considerations: E-Discovery Request Considerations

CyberControls specializes in electronic discovery and production, computer forensics, and integration of computer technology in civil litigation. Visit www.cybercontrols.net.

OCR Terminal is an online application that converts

• .pdf
• .jpg
• .tiff
• images

files into searchable, editable formats such as

• .doc
• .xl
• .rtf
• .txt

Users can also choose to convert just part of a document.

The price for the service ranges from $.04 to $.09 per page (the more you use it the lower the cost per page). Up to 20 pages/month can be converted for free. The application is available for online use or can be downloaded for desktop use. Documents can be dragged and dropped into the desktop version of OCR Terminal and converted on the fly in about ½ the time it would take to convert using a conventional OCR application.

Who knew? It turns out that free tools online can help you achieve your personal, financial, and practice goals. Below you’ll find the 10-step plan to do it.

1.  Get the big-picture of what you want do to using software like mindjet.

2. Develop task lists via Remember the Milk, Google Tasks, etc.

3.  Use services like Bing and Hunch that give suggestions.

4.  Record your progress via Springpad and like services.

5.  Use tools like Diigo, Zotero, and Laterloop, to save work.

6. Searchpad can help integrate the results of your research.

7. Calendar and organize using services like Ning and Meetup.

8. Build or participate in communities of goal-oriented people.

9. Review content-sharing sites like WordPress, YouTube, etc.

10. Refine, reconfigure, repeat.

Sites to Checkout

Geezeo tracks personal finances in a community of like-minded people. The site just launched a Facebook application.

Mint: the more famous and earlier financial website recently purchased by Intuit, the makers of Quicken. Imagine the possibilities.

Goalmigo is an online community that helps you set, track and find supporters to reach your goals.

112 Apps that help you Get Things Done (GTD) is a great list, but of course who has time when you’re getting things done?

From 5 Steps to Getting Unstuck and Pursuing Your Goals