Kia Motors America’s corporate counsel, D. Casey Flaherty, and Capensys, a firm that specializes in training services for law firms, will create an online version of Flaherty’s test that he uses to audit outside lawyers’ tech skills. Flaherty is allowed to be critical of law firms’ widespread technical incompetency – he began his career at a big law firm. And when he’s not scrutinizing Kia’s outside counsel, you can find him writing (here and here) or speaking on the topic (here). The online tool is due out next year.
Legal Tech Blog
Using Computer Forensics to Investigate IP Theft – LTN
This article was posted on Law Technology News yesterday. Particularly for businesses that have never experienced IP theft by a departing employee, the article offers a good overview of what to expect in litigation and a checklist of first steps to take in preserving the most valuable (and vulnerable) evidence in these cases. I would add that, in addition to working closely with a computer forensics expert, IT staff will usually provide critically important information about systems and proprietary software that the company may use. Read more…
E-Discovery Sifting Through the Electronic Era
Although electronic discovery has been a regular part of litigation for many years, dealing with the many facets of identifying, collecting, managing, storing, requesting and producing electronically stored information (ESI) remains a daunting task. Frankly, it can be a headache. Over the past decade, the increased focus on electronic discovery has created a morass of disputes, costs and stresses for litigators and their clients. Adequately dealing with discovery of ESI requires a careful balance of competing interests: the need to fully investigate and uncover all potential evidence, and the desire to work efficiently and cost-effectively without bankrupting your client.
Despite volumes of articles, commentaries and blogs written on e-discovery – not to mention legal opinions – some lawyers choose to ignore it. For example, we represented a plaintiff in an accounting malpractice case a few years ago. The defendant produced key memoranda that we suspected were modified prior to production in litigation. To find out, we served a supplemental request for those documents in native format, including metadata showing when the documents were created, revised and printed. The opposing counsel’s written response read, in part: The request “is unduly burdensome and vague. We do not know what it means, or what a response would look like.” Read more…
Category: Collection, E-Discovery, Insourcing, Litigation Support, Preservation, Tips and Tricks |
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Documents by Readdle is now a Universal app
In Securing Confidential Information on the iPad Part Two I recommended Documents by Readdle as one of the options to securely store documents, and other confidential material. At the time Readdle did not have an app for the iPhone, but was in the process of creating one. Well, the app has finally been released for the iPhone and can be downloaded for free from the app store here. I think Readdle did an excellent job of fitting the functionality of Documents into the smaller package of the iPhone. Whether or not you have an iPad, I think that Documents is a must have application for securely storing documents, videos, and other media locally on the iPhone.
Samsung looks to assert itself with a new security feature: Samsung Knox
The Samsung Galaxy S4 was introduced last Wednesday to great fanfare at an event at Radio City Music Hall in New York. It has been described as evolutionary rather than revolutionary by various members of the tech press, and not a threat to Apple’s iPhone 5S likely to be announced at some point this year. That said, unless Apple is planning something radically different from their normal release cycle, there is one feature that distinguishes the Galaxy S4 from the iPhone: Samsung Knox. Read more…
Invest in the Future Now: Law Professors Suggest a Paradigm Shift in How Law Firms Should Operate
Last week, ReInventLaw, sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation and Michigan State University, held the first of a series of “TED” style talks to discuss the future of law practice and the changes in technology and regulation we might see. The ReInvent Law Laboratory was founded by MSU professors Daniel Martin Katz and Renee Newman Knate. Its message is simple: “Innovation. Technology. Entrepreneurship.” Professor Katz teaches e-discovery at MSU, one of very few law schools that offer such courses, and he has a warning to firms that continue to ignore the “storm brewing” and fail to invest in the tools required to deliver legal services in the 21st century: invest or lose out.
Insourcing Litigation Support – Part Two
In Part One of this series we provided an overview of the reasons we decided to primarily insource our e-discovery processes. In this post, we will cover the investment associated with the initial setup, and maintenance of, an insourced e-discovery program. Our firm invested an initial outlay of funds to get up and running, and regularly invests in the costs associated with maintaining the system. The initial investment might include hardware to run the back end databases, and the software for processing, reviewing, and producing documents. Insourcing also increases the complexity for the IT department, especially in smaller firms that have smaller departments, as you will likely be working with a database server for the back end of one or more of your e-discovery applications. Lastly, insourcing will affect your storage, backup, and archiving strategy, not to mention creating its own specific issues for IT to troubleshoot. However, our experience shows that we (and our clients) save money over the long run by insourcing.
Securing Confidential Information on the iPad Part Two
In Part One of this series, I looked at the basics of locking the iPad down with a passcode and a MDM software solution. In this article I am going to focus on some of the ways you can securely review documents on an iPad. One of the things that makes the iPad so convenient is it’s ability to easily review documents, make notes, and in general help reduce the amount of paper one needs to carry around. The simplest way to add documents to your iPad is via email. However, this becomes a bit cumbersome if you have more than a few documents that you want to review. Also, if you need to make notes or edit the document, you really need a few apps installed to handle this. Read more…
Removing the PDF/A attribute
Here at Stoll Berne we use Westlaw CaseLogistix as our e-discovery review platform, and Westlaw CaseProduction as our e-discovery production platform. These products work well most of the time, and Westlaw CaseLogistix is one of the easiest review platforms to use, especially if you need to do reviews of native documents. So, what does this have to do with PDFs and PDF/A documents specifically? Well, in order to do redactions, get an accurate page count, and to produce any documents out of Westlaw CaseLogistix, you must first create what is called a markup. This is essentially a PDF image of the native document that sits in the same folder as the native document, with a unique filename. The exception to the creation of an additional markup document is when the native is already a PDF. However, if the native PDF has certain properties, Westlaw CaseLogistix will fail to recognize it as a markup.
Insourcing Litigation Support – Part 1
Recently, we’ve seen a few pieces about the various reasons law firms bring litigation support in house (“insource”), including e-discovery processes, or outsource all litigation support to third-party vendors or co-counsel. These articles got us talking about our own choice to bring much of this work in house. Read more…
