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| 1 | Ad Litem Consulting, Inc. | View |
| 2 | Litigation Support Vendors Association | View |
| 3 | Litigation Support Technical Standards | View |
| 4 | Litigation Support Mailing List Active Archive | View |
| 5 | Discovery Dictionary | View |
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1 - 8 of 8
| # | Summary | Action |
| 1 | Litigation Support Department
To purchase the book, or request an invoice, please visit:
Ad Litem Consulting, Inc.
| View |
| 2 | Litigation Budget
Visit the Ad Litem Consulting store to buy the spreadsheet.
Click Here. | View |
| 3 | Services
Litigation Support Services
Law firm technical staff can provide a myriad of services. Some of these may save the attorney their case. When litigation support services are performed well, the attorneys may use overwhelming productions that intimidate the other side. These services can and will help your attorneys win law suits. That is a fact.
The question is whether the firm should perform these services.
A lot of talk happens in our industry about what services should be performed in-house and which should go to the vendor. Every law firm has its own answer. The real issue is risk management and ongoing support. As a rule, once one leads others down a particular road, he is responsible for getting them to the other end.
The question of direction is not limited to performing technical work or not. The Operations Manual outlines other tasks, some recurring, that must be performed. Some of these tasks are clerical, such as inventory, but important nonetheless. The department must plan workload not just for the short but long-term, too. If litigation support performs technical work then it must be ready to support and perform any new technical work. This new work usually comes in the form of a call from a paralegal explaining about a special issue and a rapid turnaround time. This is that "road" thing again.
Litigation Support Services
- Project Management
- Vendor Liaison
- Budgeting
- Client Technical Liaison
- Opposing Firm Technical Liaison
- Media Creation
- Hosting
- Document Review Database Administration
- Exhibit Creation & Support
- Training Strategies
- Example Service - Hosting
Choosing to charge for hosting is a decision every law firm must make. Some law firms believe that storage should be considered part of the cost of doing business and therefore not invoice material. Other firms recognize that storing and supporting eventually large amounts of information represents a real cost to the firm, beyond the standard cost of doing business.
Law firms are businesses. As a business, the owners will spend money when the business arguments support the decision. Nothing makes an argument like a report from the Accounting department.
Consistent Experience - Consistent Product
An Operations Manual means that every technician produces the same product and uses the same overall strategies. The manual also means that the customer (attorneys, clients, vendors and opposing firms) receive a consistent experience. That experience is professional and well organized. Litigation Support consistently provides all the necessary materials at the right times to the right people.
All services are provided the same way irrespective of the technician. This means that technicians can share work load to help in a crunch or to avoid a crunch.
If your technician fell ill suddenly, how would your firm get the work done? How would the firm know where to find important technical files? The Operations Manual is your answer.
Operations Manual
The Operations Manual contains strategies to help the department provide consistent and expert services. Part of the overall strategy outlined in the manual includes knowing what to out-source and which services to perform in-house. The project management role must be performed either way, so the question is really one of time, ability and risk management.
Every litigation case follows the same case lifecycle. This means the same types of discovery will require the same types of processing. Whether the technical work is performed by litigation support staff or a vendor the department can use the Operations Manual to provide a consistent management, strategic and technical approach.
The Operations Manual is complete solution that will save your client money while speeding up review and production. Slam the other side with a production that beats traditional expectations. There are Litigation Support services that can benefit every case. At the same time the structured Litigation Support department will provide profit to the firm.
| View |
| 4 | Litigation Case Lifecycle
Case Lifecycle & Task Lists
The Operations Manual walks Litigation Support through the entire case lifecycle. From pleading to the final destruct order after trial the Operations Manual guides Litigation Support. The Manual tells which forms to fill out and when to call meetings. More importantly the manual also tells the purpose and goals to achieve vis a vis forms and meetings.
The legal team will reuse some of the discovery from the beginning of the case in every phase of the case. The manual walks Litigation Support through each phase while accounting for needs in subsequent phases of the case.
Check Lists
The check list is only necessary until the technician learns the outlined steps. As each litigation follows the same patterns, the same check lists come into play over and over. Incoming media is always processed the same way thanks to the Incoming Media Checklist. Other check lists include: Production Checklist, Quality Checklist.
Batteries Included
The Operations Manual includes various documents, emails and cover sheets to use at the various phases of the case. Simply replace "Firm Name" with the real firm name as needed. The entire case lifecycle appears in a Microsoft Project file. Below is a sample of the steps Litigation Support should manage for the production phase of the litigation.
Case Lifecycle Task List - "Phase 5: Production"
Firm Productions
- Attorney gives completed Production Request Form to Lit Support
- Lit Support performs Production Checklist
- Lit Support calculates turnaround time
- Lit Support reports turnaround time and any identified issues vis a vis the checklist
- Lit Support project manages production
- Preproduction database updated to include production Bates numbers
- Lit Support sets up separate production database w/ stamped images for team to view
Lit Support provides production sets to internal inventory and parties per checklist
Opposing Productions
- All media should be forwarded to Litigation Support by Team
- Lit Support performs Incoming Media Checklist
- Lit Support creates review batch folders, per meeting
- Lit Support alerts team about new batches and QC test results
- Lit Support notes any issues (technical, person, schedule)
- Lit Support updates Budget Spreadsheet
- Lit Support provides Discovery Feedback Questionnaire to Team
Result: All Collections Produced and Opposing's Collection Reviewed
Standard Operating Procedures
Today's software and electronic discovery requires technological know-how. The lack of a paralegal background was always a hinderance to hiring a technician. Most non-legal people do not know what a Bates number is and the ways to use it. The Operations Manual shows the technician what information to gather, what results are expected at every stage of a case. Standard operating procedures are the recipes of the business world. The technician sees what ingredients are required, how to complete the project and what the results should look like.
When gathering required information from paralegals and attorneys, the technician can rely on provided forms and documented case strategies.
Roles & Responsibilities Today's software and electronic discovery requires technological know-how. If a law firm simply throws electronic discovery at whatever vendor gave a box of cookies, the resulting product may resemble the ultimate results of the cookies. The Standard Operating Procedures outlines roles and assigns responsibilities. It then walks everyone through the life of the case. | View |
| 5 | Computer Forensics
Computer Forensics
Computer forensics is hardly a new science to the world of technology. The ability to recover data from hard drives and tapes in most any condition is even recognized in the court room. More recently attorneys and litigation support are faced with the question of when to use it and when to use it.
Unless the firm is willing to put their own technical staff on the stand, it may be worth the cost to use a computer forensics investigator to turn the "smoking gun" hard drive into a database.
The Operations Manual provides steps, strategies and guidance when possible. The choice of whether or not to use computer forensics investigators is one only the attorney can make. Whether the litigation support department can do anything beyond vendor relations and project management as regards computer forensics is a decision the firm should make.
Irrespective of the source or format of discovery, the Operations Manual shows what approaches to take for minimizing the quantity of discovery for review. When the vendor delivers their product, the technical specifications and organization of the resulting database will match the firm standard. The goal is to get all discovery into the same document review system as the rest of discovery. The Operations Manual shows litigation support how to incorporate all discovery for review. Computer Forensics is simply a collection method.
As example, an ex-employee of Smith Inc. formatted their hard drive. Smith Inc. believes there was important information the former employee only kept on their hard drive. A computer forensics investigator can retrieve files from the formatted hard drive. When it comes time to testify about how the firm and Smith Inc. was able to get the data, the investigator is key.
For the legal team to review the discovery the investigator recovered, the computer forensics investigator or a firm preferred vendor will convert the files into images and a database. If the database does not match firm standards, the product may not be usable without additional time and expense. The Operations Manual requires that litigation support have a chance to prequalify the vendor against a contingency just like this.
Should computer forensics be applied to all media in a given case? The Operations Manual provides strategies around what to collect and what to ignore. If the deponant's files reside on only one hard drive out of a group of five, then only use computer forensics on the one hard drive. The vendor may suggest the benefits of processing all five drives. Is the biggest benefit the additional revenue? The Operations Manual helps Litigation Support to provide strategies. A good litigation support department not only provides top quality products but also good advice.
The computer forensics investigator will take several careful steps to find and retrieve possible electronic evidence that may still exist on a pc, server, PDA, BlackBerry or other device. Today this is also starting to include voice mail, as each voice mail is a file on a hard drive.
Here is the basic outline for using an electronic discovery investigator:
- The source of the data is not altered in any way when data is extracted.
- Identifies all potentially interesting files whether deleted, hidden partially destroyed or password protected.
- Saves all files to a separate storage medium, such as a hard drive.
- Provides a list of all files, including the original storage state for the legal team to review.
- Most computer forensics companies will also identify files that contain keywords and data restrictions. However, at this point, the resulting files can be processed, including culling and conversion to .TIF, like any other discovery.
...and finally...
- Provides an affidavit with credentials and testifies on the stand as an expert witness.
| View |
| 6 | Training
Qualified trainers and implementers are available to the firm. Chances are pretty good that you have multiple law suits in various stages of litigation. This is fine for our purposes. It is actually helpful. The trainer is going to walk the technicians through the entire case lifecycle. During the training, the technicians are encouraged to discuss real cases and how the Operations Manual effects their efforts.
The real training is more about organization and referencing check-lists than a technical how-to. If your department has technical staff, they should already know how to manipulate ASCII delimited files. What they need to know is the required result. Through a documented standard, all the required results are documented. The results are easy to evaluate for accuracy through an understanding of the Operations Manual.
As the Operations Manual contains hundreds of pages of documentation your firm and Litigation Support can reference strategies and tasks as relevant, throughout the case.
Qualified Trainers
Once familiar with the system in the Operations Manual, your litigation support department is qualified to train any new people. Because litigation support services each case identically it is possible to add additional help with a minimal learning curve. Should your department decide to hire a new person, the Operations Manual is the ideal training material and everyone is a potential mentor.
Use of The Operations Manual Trains Technicians To...
- Trade cases and workload between technicians.
- Work to a consistent goal, diminishing mistakes through inexperience.
- Train new hires and on-site consultants.
- Qualify vendors to produce a consistent product.
- Increase the number of client-matters it can handle concurrently.
- Decrease vendor costs to the client.
- Track and increase revenues for the firm.
Operations Manuals
The Operations Manual mentors the reader. It is written to help train the reader. It outlines strategies, steps and goals for the entire case lifecycle. The process of updating legacy data (that means old or current databases and files) to conform to the new standards is more than enough practice to learn to use most of the principles. Firms with an existing department of more than one person will quickly benefit the most as everyone handles their cases with a uniform and consistent approach.
"The technician...needs to know why he's doing what he's doing. He needs to know the results he's accountable for and the standards against which his work is being evaluated. He also needs to know where the [case] is going and where his accountabilities fit into its overall strategy"
(pg.52, Michael E. Gerber, "The E Myth Revisited")
Use With Every Case
The Operations Manual is not just about how to organize and support a single client matter. The Manual is about organizing all of the cases in terms of storage and how they are managed. For the system to succeed every technician and every client matter must be handled in accordance with the Operations Manual documentation. Litigation Support can reference the manual for all client matters going forward.
The added benefit is that technicians versed in the Operations Manual can be of immediate assistance to any client matter.
Training The Legal Team
The Operations Manual provides the materials necessary to show the attorney and paralegals a plan for handling their discovery through the life of the case. Much of the Operations Manual is written so that anyone can understand the content. It is litigation support's job to win over the team and make sure responsibilities are matched to the right roles. As introduction, litigation support can provide the legal team with a budget spreadsheet.
About Implementation
Need a helpful push in the right direction? It can be very difficult to set aside time for Litigation Support to spend on organizing historical data.
Ad Litem is ready to work on-site with your firm and help implement the Operations Manual. Ad Litem will work with accounting and the appropriate partners in the firm to get the department running per the Operations Manual. | View |
| 7 | Support
Ongoing support is available. We want you to succeed.
The Ongoing Support Program offers law firms a protection policy against future industry changes. The Operations Manual is built upon solid organizational, technical and strategic principles. As the litigation support market matures the Operations Manual will mature as well. Ad Litem will continue to update and expand upon the strategies that affect the litigation support services and department viability.
Because the Operations Manual covers many aspects of running the department, most ongoing support takes the form of strategic advice. A prerequisite to the Ongoing Support Program is that the Firm must be a member of the Ad Litem Ongoing Support Program, and that existing Operations Manuals be upgraded to the latest release version.
Updates to files such as the budget estimator and other documents are included in your ongoing support. All materials are ready for you to personalize. As such, then a new type of discovery comes into play, Ad Litem will update the budget spreadsheet.
Ad Litem is committed to the ongoing training of your staff. Through onsite trips as well as remote training, we can help to ensure that the Litigation Support department staff are constantly increasing their effectiveness.
Ad Litem has been an active participant in the Litigation Support community for years. It is directly responsible for functionality found in certain products. Ad Litem was cofounder of the Litigation Support Vendor Association. The not-for-profit organization provides free forums moderated by industry experts and software makers. As of November, 2004, there are over 1,200 members.
The Litigation Support Department Operations Manual is the culmination of many years of research and labor on the front lines. It is a work in progress. As the market changes, so does the Manual. What does not change is perhaps more important than what does change. What does not change are the key storage and case strategies that benefit each phase in the litigation case lifecycle.
One can search the Operations Manual. This means that as situations arise the technician need simply refer to the manual. The Case Lifecycle contains all the steps to go from pleading to post-trial destruct orders. The cases are too complex and the stakes are too high to have no plan at all. Is your department a benefit to both firm and client? Does your department pay for itself? Through the Operations Manual it can. With ongoing support it can do so today, tomorrow and in the future.
Through ongoing support, Ad Litem can advise your firm about the most important changes to make first and help implement them. Whether it is working with accounting on cost codes or qualifying vendors for future projects, Ad Litem can help implement and help the firm see the goals and accept the strategies Litigation Support and the Operations Manual outline.
The ultimate goal of the Operations Manual is for the department to operate independent of guidance by any outside trainer. Once the technicians master the strategies and institute technical standards the training is done. At this point the accounting numbers will show whether adding a new person is warranted. When the firm hires a new technician, the Operations Manual is the required reading. Any mentor can supplement discussions with pages in the Operations Manual. The technician knows exactly where to look for files and how to process incoming media. The attorney finds working with the new hire feels just like working with anyone else in lit support. The attorney gets the same questions, forms and results.
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| 8 | Testimonials
Your writings have been a cornerstone to what I am trying to push, and I think the direction that litigation Support should go as a field. | View |
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