Litigation Support

With the complexity of litigated matters today, how is your firm taking advantage of document management techniques that enable greater success when supporting clients? Dedicated processing, consultative database design, and trial/settlement exhibit preparation are all areas that can benefit firms today. Traditionally, paralegals and legal secretaries have been pressed with the duties of document management. As time has progressed, litigation support services have evolved to address the needs of the legal community. Now what is needed is a service that can do more!

By removing the burden of document management from this support staff, firms are now able to handle more cases effectively at the same time. This is crucial to any firm's bottom line. By handling the documents effectively during discovery, firm's can easily assemble exhibits for deposition and/or trial. Assembling expert review packets need not be cumbersome. Do your attorney's favor paper or will they review images? Do you need an expert witness database of testimony? All are important aspects of the litigation support process. No longer are the tools lacking to support these efforts. Firm's can take advantage of robust services that have various advantages.

How does your firm handle litigation? Do you view the document management aspect as necessary evil to support the case? What if this function could be turned into a competitive advantage weapon? How successful could your firm be? Let us consult with you to determine the most effective method of litigation support!

EDD

Electronic Data Discovery or Electronic Digital Discovery is a process litigation support that transforms E-mails, Microsoft Office files, Adobe PDF files, tiff images, and a variety of other file formats to a standardized electronic file format (usually Tiff or PDF). The files being produced are discovery that is relevant to complex litigations. Most firms are now familiar with the accumulation and production of such discovery. Each project is unique and sometime contains legacy files which must be standardized as well. These arcane file formats require specialized handling in order to standardize them for review.

Issues
The issues associated with EDD are what types of files are to be processed? What format is the Standardized format? Are searching capabilities to be maintained for the document population? These issues can be complex or simple depending on the support effort designed for the litigation at hand.

Traditional Approach
In the past, all electronic files were printed to paper copy (blowbacks) and reviewed prior to sequencing (bates labeling) for litigation support purposes. The documents were then oftentimes scanned back into a litigation support system after being hand labeled. The amount of error with this traditional approach could be high due to the amount of steps involved with the processing of digital files. Also, time and cost are much larger with the added processing steps.

New Approach
Using EDD techniques, the documents are reviewed electronically by the attorneys and paralegals working on the case for relevancy. If they are unable to do this review before processing, EDD begins and produces a working set of digital Standardized documents. These standardized documents may be sequenced electronic (electronic bates labeling or endorsing) prior to importing into a litigation support system for review. The metadata for coding databases is specific file header information that can be captured during EDD processing. EDD is a one time process piece that saves, at minimum, three physical processing steps from the traditional approach (blowback, labeling, and scanning). This definitely saves money and time due to the efficiency of processing.

Drawbacks and Limitations
EDD does have drawbacks and limitations. For one thing, many people may not be versed in the proper way to perform digital review and relevant pieces may be omitted. This will continue to happen until firms become comfortable with dealing with digital discovery. Two, no canned software package can possibly handle all file formats fluidly and correctly each time. Most notably, Microsoft Excel files have formatting issues for digital production purposes that have implications for all document populations. There are ways to handle these issues, but they exist for all EDD software packages. Is color important to a case? This also has ramifications for processing and usage of the file formats (graphic files). Getting a handle on these issues will save time and money when supporting cases.

Repository/Data Warehousing

Repositories and Data Warehouses are an archival technique designed for use by law firms and/or corporations for rapidly searching and retrieving documents. They also are used to reduce storage costs and reduce the amount of physical space necessary to maintain documents.

Let us Tailor an Approach that Makes Sense

Tailored solutions can address any drawback and / or limitation. By knowing the ramifications of formats and having knowledge of their support use, solutions may be crafted to handle tricky situations to yield maximum effectiveness all the way up the support chain. Document Conversion Services, Inc. knows that, like children, no two litigations are alike. A litigation is distinct on its own and may have special needs and considerations. This is why it is important to work with a group that can assist you with processing issues and not lean on a standardized software package as the panacea of litigation support!