Futurelawyer

Summation IBlaze - Litigation Support

Litigation support software is a wonderful addition to any trial lawyer's arsenal. When the FutureLawyer was young (many moons ago, grasshopper), a trial notebook was the lawyer's litigation support system. If you wanted to find a particular quote from a deposition during cross, you leafed through the deposition transcripts in the deposition folder. If you needed one of the pleadings, you picked up the pleading folder and leafed through it. If you were really organized, you had the pleadings tab indexed with little sticky tabs, and a paper index at the front. Well, Dorothy, we aren't in Kansas anymore. Today, software exists that integrates transcript and document on the computer, and indexes the contents so that a search engine instantly locates any document or part of a document and any transcript or part of a transcript. Once in the computer, any exhibit or pleading can be projected on to a screen for viewing by the whole courtroom. The best software for this purpose is Summation IBlaze, by Summation Legal Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of CT Corporation. The software contains realtime transcript support, full text imaging and OCR capabilities, electronic evidence features, production tools and more. Check it out at the Summation website Summation . While the FutureLawyer has used PaperPort to project scanned documents and exhibits in the past, Summation brings real power to the trial presentation. The coolest thing is the search capability, enabling the trial lawyer to find, for examples, all instances of a particular word or phrase in all of the transcripts , documents, and other materials. Power to the people, you have to check this out if you do any trial work.

Witness Preparation - DepPrep

Okay, it's time to tell your dirty little secret. You don't spend enough time preparing your witnesses for deposition and trial, do you? In the rush to do all of the things demanded in the time before trial, witness preparation is too often the poor runner-up in the competition for an attorney's time and attention. Enter the makers of the wonderful knowledge management software discussed in a previous post, CaseMap by CaseSoft .   DepPrep is an electronic slide show that the site claims "makes it easy to groom witnesses for their depositions."  The FutureLawyer uses it as a visual aid during witness preparation conferences, and it takes the viewer through everything a deponent needs to know about testifying, from demeanor to types of questions. I think it serves as well to prepare witnesses for trial. A free trial download at the CaseSoft site is available. It is highly recommended. I wouldn't prep a witness without it.
DepPrep is the result of a collaboration between CaseSoft and  attorney David A. Hirsch, co-author of the monthly Tech Audit column in the ABA Journal, and the trial download can be found at DepPrep Download .

 

EDD - Electronic Data Discovery

Discovery of information stored in electronic form is fast becoming the most important litigation tool, as more and more information is stored exclusively in electronic form. The FutureLawyer has recommended modifying document requests to include information stored on disks, drives, Internet storage systems, and all other forms of electronic storage for some time. However, the principal decisions to be made by the litigator nowadays, involve the methods and means of finding and analyzing electronic data. The technology section of Law.Com recently posted an article about the 5 principal decisions in litigation to be made by the litigator. You can read the article at EDD Article . We all know that information can be hidden in the metadata stored by word processing programs, and in the headers and tracks created by email. Should a professional be hired to recover deleted data? Litigants with secrets will attempt to cover up and hide the evidence of their misdeeds. Many of them, however, are not skilled at the computer skills required to permanently erase this evidence. The modern lawyer has an ethical duty to become conversant with EDD techniques. Are you?

Backup, Backup, Backup

Hurricane Katrina has everyone thinking about disaster lately, and preparedness. In this age of computer data, every lawyer needs to be thinking about the essential data about the firm and its clients that resides on hard drives of its computers. As I write this, I am backing up my files to a tiny external hard drive built by SmartDisk, the FireLite, and am using Norton Ghost back-up software, by Symantec. SmartDisk   and Norton combine to give data security in a very small package, and the USB interface is plug and play. 60 Gigabytes of space in a pocket sized drive costs about $150 street, and Norton Ghost makes a mirror image backup of any drive without any interruption of the Windows operating system or running programs. It runs in the background, and, so far, is bulletproof. I prefer external backup drives, since they can be stored in a separate location. If you are in a larger firm, do you personally supervise the back-up process, or have you delegated it to someone else? Do you know where your backups are? Are you certain? Remember the Boy Scout motto, "Be Prepared". Don't tell yourself you will get around to it. Do it now.

Sheet Fed Scanners and PaperPort - a Killer Combination

Sometimes, technology solutions sit on our desk, or in our computer, and become such a part of our practice that we don't give them a second thought. It hasn't been that long, however, since competent sheet fed scanners have been around, and they already are standard equipment. The FutureLawyer uses a combination of several Visioneer Strobe color sheet fed scanners,( Visioneer) , and PaperPort 9 software, by ScanSoft, (ScanSoft), to create a killer combination for the desktop or notebook computer. If it can be passed through the scanner, I have likely stored it in my notebook computer's hard drive. Documents, photographs, and any other paper can be filed away using PaperPort's Windows Explorer-like interface. The Optical Character Recognition (OCR) engine has been improved so much over the years that scans yield editable word processor based electronic documents that are better than 99% accurate. In addition, the first killer application of the PaperPort software world, "FormTyper", is still around, and still makes short work of standard fill in the blank forms. The Strobe line of scanners  is so small and portable,  and so inexpensive, that I carry one with me when I travel. Just plug it in an available USB port, and, presto, the same scanning capacity that I have at the office. You owe it to yourself to try these wonderful tech tools.

Jury Instructions OnLine -

Orange County, Florida, the home of Mickey Mouse, has always been on the cutting edge of technology. It has one of the first high tech courtrooms, Courtroom 23, built in 1998 and 1999, complete with plasma screens and built in evidence presentation systems. You can take a virtual tour at the Ninth Circuit's website, Ninth Circuit  . Trial lawyers can also get help from a very cool website, that allows online creation of Florida Standard Jury Instructions. Jury Instructions OnLine  provides the lawyer with an easy way to generate jury instructions for any civil or criminal matter in Florida. We all know that worrying about jury instructions is tough enough when we are focused on preparing the next witness, or staying alert during a trial so that we don't miss something. This wonderful little resource simplifies one of the time-consuming trial duties, and permits an attorney to focus on the case specific instructions that sometimes can sway a jury.

Treo 650 and the Next Disaster

Would widespread use of the emerging wireless computer networks have helped after Katrina? I don't know, but, in the long-term planning that is sure to follow this disaster, it bears looking at. I have discussed my personal long-term journey to the promised land of a law office in the pocket. Why not emergency communications services? For a time in New Orleans , although spotty, cell phone service was operational. Verizon's EV-DO wireless broad-band, discussed in this blog recently, and other cell phone data services could have made a difference in the lack of coordinated efforts by emergency personnel in the days following the hurricane's landfall. Just a thought, but why don't all emergency personnel carry satellite phones, and PDAs? Like everything else, is it an economic decision? Can cell phone towers be hurricane proofed? The FutureLawyer carries a Treo 650 and an emergency charger that runs on 9 Volt batteries. Two 9 Volts and a charged up Treo will last up to 3 days. I hope the decision makers will spend some time and money thinking about ways to do it better next time, and not too much time assessing blame. Just thinking out loud...
Rick

Amicus Attorney adds Time and Billing

In news from the frozen North, Toronto's Gavel and Gown Software announced yesterday the addition of Amicus Accounting, a time and billing and accounting addition to their leading Case Management software for attorneys, Amicus Attorney. Readers know that the FutureLawyer swears by Amicus Attorney, and it has run my professional life for some years now. The acquisition of PcLaw by Lexis Nexis, the behemoth legal publications and research firm, causes this lawyer to want to see what Gavel and Gown has to offer, although I have been happy with PcLaw for some years as well. Amicus Attorney will still exchange information with the leading time and billing programs, but the integration of Amicus data with an in house time and billing solution sounds interesting. It is scheduled for release in 2006, and the FutureLawyer will be standing in line to be one of the first to try it out. Amicus Attorney is the first software I load in the morning, and, since I sync it to my Treo 650, its calendar, to do, and contacts data is with me always. I can't wait to add the time and billing functionality to the mix. To Gavel and Gown, "it's about time, guys!"
Rick

RSS Feeds - The Future of Communication?

RSS - Really Simple Syndication, is shorthand for the way many authors and websites and organizations are communicating with their contituencies lately. Many websites, especially blogs like the Futurelawyer, are providing daily content. Rather than requiring readers to visit the page each day (many of us would spend all day surfing if we visited each site we are interested in) , RSS permits the site to "push" the content to the reader, using reader software. Today, more web browsers are capable of reading RSS feeds, if the user "subscribes" to them. Florida lawyers can subscribe to the Florida Bar feed, or to the Futurelawyer feed, merely by linking to the site's published feed file. Feed files are XML (extensible markup language) files that many bloggers automatically generate. The Futurelawyer site, and others, will generally provide links to such feeds. Today, the Futurelawyer site has added the Florida Bar's feed to its other feeds. Check it out. If you are interested in learning more about XML and RSS, go to O'Reilly's  XML.COM . All the news that's fit to feed, brought to a website near you.
Rick

AIM - Instant messaging - Tool for Lawyers?

Recently, I have discovered that instant messaging, originally the tool of kids communicating with their friends, is a remarkably simple and competent method of communicating with my secretary from a variety of locations, when a cell phone call is inappropriate. In years past, we cognoscenti of the Internet universe looked down upon the masses who used AOL as their pathway to the Internet. AIM, Aol Instant Messaging has changed the way I think about AOL. I have developed a new respect for the ease of use, and ubiquity, of this wonderful little tool, since I installed it to have a way to communicate with the kids in the house. AIM , in its current incarnation, version 5.9, is a remarkably competent resident communication tool. It is free, has some wonderful add-ons, like the Net2Phone voice over IP telephone software, and resides quietly in the taskbar. Anyone added to your buddy list can  instantly communicate with you. It even has a Palm version, that, when loaded on to the Palm Treo 650, allows me to be accessible to instant messages with the speed and alacrity of the Blackberry addicts. All of the people I care about, or need to be in contact with on a regular basis, can reach me on my computer or Palm, at any time. Net2Phone allows really cheap phone calls to any phone from the computer. For 2 cents a minute, or thereabouts, you can call your mother in Poughkeepsie, or your friend in Idaho. It attaches to AIM, and you can even use a video cam for video phone calls. It is a brave new world of instant communication.
So, dude, IM me. Email is for old codgers!
Rick