The Estrin Report

Excellent Course You've Just Got to Take: EDiscovery for Techies

There's not much out there in the way of specific eDiscovery training for those with expert litigation support, technology or IT skills.   That is, until OLP came up with a fantastic course: EDiscovery for Techies.

I am most impressed by the lead instructor, Bill Gallivan, of Digital War Room.  Bill and his colleagues have come with with a course that takes into consideration that techies know everything there is to know about technology but need to learn - in the manner that they learn - the relevant parts of eDiscovery that are particularly applicable to their position.

The course is 8 weeks and meets twice a week for two hours each course.  If your serious about getting ahead in your career, you need to consider this important time investment. It's all online and by using a webcam (I got mine at Best Buy for $24.95), you interact with the instructor and other students.  If you miss a class, you can take the recorded version.  Better hurry, though, because the course starts on July 19th.  Right now, OLP is offering a two-for-one tuition - two people for only 495.00.  It's a great deal.

The course is a "doozy" as my father used to say.  Here is part of the syllabus:

Week #                                Topic

1	Introduction to Legal Terminology
2	RULES:Civil Procedure and Discovery Process  + Federal Rules - Meet and Confer, Conflicts and Interests, Ethical considerations
3	INTERPRETATION OF THE RULES: 2009-2010 Case Law Review - Court Decisions Involving Electronic Discovery , SEDONA CONFERENCE; Sanctions, Duties to Preserve, Spoliation, Rule 37, Safe Harbor Provisions
4	EDRM BEST PRACTICES - IDENTIFICATION, PRESERVATION COLLECTION =  Litigation Holds, Triggering Event, Litigation Response Plan, Discovery Response Team, Duties to Preserve, Rule 37, Safe Harbor
5	EDRM TOOLS and TECHNOLOGIESfor IDENTIFICATION, PRESERVATION COLLECTION - Risk Mitigation and Legal Hold Triggers,  Identification, Data Mapping and Preservation; EDRM - Identification, Data Mapping and Preservation
6	EDRM BEST PRACTICES - PROCESSING and ANALYSIS/ECA/Gross relevancy; Filtering
7	EDRM TOOLS and TECHNOLOGIES- PROCESSING and ANALYSIS/ECA/Gross relevancy; Filtering
8	EDRM BEST PRACTICES- Review, Production, Presentation
9	EDRM TOOLS and TECHNOLOGIES- Review, Production, Presentation (Including trial technologies)
10	Matter Budgeting:  Managing expectations, forecasting hours, resources, tool cost and vendor costs -- tracking budgets and out of scope.  Sample bdgeting exercise and homework,
11	Practice Matters:  Software Contract Disputes
12	Final Exam Review -  Business Ethics, Qualifications, OLP Certifications and the future of our industry

In fact, even if you're not such a techie, the course outline looks absolutely fantastic.  Register now because the course starts on July 19th.  The more you know, the better you get.....

Research, 'Riting & Resources (Ok, it's a stretch - I agree)

Celia Elwell, RP, is a very experienced paralegal in Oklahoma.  An avid researcher and writer, Celia sends me these wonderful listings filled with interesting articles, posts and valuable tidbits.  The light finally went on inside my head (where else?).  I thought, "Why am I not sharing these our readers?"  Enjoy!

SCOTUS Justices on the Language of Law: Advocacy and Legal Writing (and by Implication Legal Research, Too), Law Librarian Blog
http://bit.ly/n0jdbu
 

Standard of Review in Five Easy Steps, by Raymond Ward, the (new) legal writer
http://bit.ly/mzfiQT

 

The Winning Wal-Mart Brief: Six Returns, by Ross Guberman, Legal Writing Pro

http://bit.ly/rgp7oH

New Examples of Good Legal Writing, Legal Writing Prof Blog
http://bit.ly/mRWBBA

Legal Writing 201: 30 Suggestions to Improve Readability or How To Write For Judges, Not Like Judges, by Judge Mark P. Painter, Ohio First District Court of Appeals
http://www.plainlanguagenetwork.org/Legal/legalwriting.pdf

Oops, Thou Shalt Not Know How to Use One's Electronic Calendar without Risking Missing Court Filing Deadlines, Law Librarian Blog
http://bit.ly/qegYGC

 

ABA Ethics Panel Strikes Sensible Balance on Online Marketing, Robert Ambrogi’s Law Sites

http://bit.ly/mq8hHk

Connecticut becomes first state to require paid sick leave, by Sheri Qualters, The National Law Journal, Law.com

http://bit.ly/nxmL9s

Favorite E-Discovery Links, FloridaLawFirm.com and E-Discovery Team

http://floridalawfirm.com/links.html

"eDiscovery" in Domestic Relations Mutual Scheming: Digging up Dirt by "Friending" Ex-Spouse, Law Librarian Blog
http://bit.ly/kLqyDx

Facebook Discovery in Litigation, by Ronald B. Miller, Jr., The Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog
http://bit.ly/gwiYUQ

MySpace, Facebook, GPS and other e-Discovery: Coming Soon to a Texas Divorce Proceeding Near You, by DiscoveryResources.org Reporter
http://bit.ly/pYn4zQ

Are Facebook and MySpace Messages Subject to Discovery?, by Doug Cornelius, Compliance Building
http://bit.ly/p05n0V

10 Trial Practice Blogs Worth Bookmarking, by Gyi Tsakalakis, Lawyerist.com
http://lawyerist.com/10-trial-practice-blogs/

Top Encryption Techniques for Lawyers, by John Edwards, Legal Technology News, Law.com
http://bit.ly/jn7I3s

Top Ten Tips for Leveraging Cutting-Edge Legal Research Technology to Control Legal Costs and Drive Client Value, by Lydia E. Flocchini, Association of Corporate Counsel (with hat tip to Bill Statsky)
http://bit.ly/lBfNjm

Data: Driving Force in Web 3.0, EDD Update
http://bit.ly/lmj01u

In Trio of Big Business Cases, Justices Sharply Divide, by Marcia Coyle, The National Law Journal, Law.com
http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202498592542

Roberts Court extends line of permissive First Amendment rulings in video game case, by Tony Mauro, The National Law Journal, Law.com
http://bit.ly/lCHUjO

Clarifying personal jurisdiction . . . or not, by Howard Wasserman, PrawfsBlawg, http://bit.ly/iLFwqg

D.C. Divorce Lawyer, Nobel Laureate Feud, by Zoe Tillman, The National Law Journal, Law.com
http://bit.ly/k5Y8Vi

And in case you thought tort reform was slowing down . . . ., Civil Procedure and Federal Courts Blog
http://bit.ly/mmjG9q

Great Reading for the Week of July 4th, 2011, Jim Calloway's Law Practice Blog
http://bit.ly/knx5vq

National Conference of Bar Examiners
http://www.ncbex.org/

iPhoneJD - a blog for lawyers using iPhones and iPads
http://www.iphonejd.com/

10 iPhone Apps Every Lawyer Should Have, by Erin Geiger Smith, Business Insider Law Review

http://read.bi/oPUTYx

Adding Bates-numbers in Acrobat is easy (and powerful), PDF for Lawyers

http://bit.ly/pXDaIp

Ready for CM/ECF Changes: Conforming Existing PDF Files to PDF/A, by Rick Borstein, Acrobat for Legal Professionals
http://adobe.ly/qXGtN2

LitSupport Salary Survey: Do Paralegals With Tech Skills Earn More?

OLP invites you to participate in the first Litigation Support Salary & Utilization Survey to provide legal professionals with unparalleled insight into salary and career performance information.  We’re committed to helping people make the most of their careers, so we will provide a free salary survey to give you inside information about your market value, directly from your peers.  
              

  This same set of data is used to help legal professionals make more informed career decisions.

           Most employees don’t have the information they need to make informed career decisions.  While there are plenty of opinions, anecdotes, and generic statistics, there hasn’t been a place to turn for personalized career information based on data and facts.

                OLP’s goal is empower people to make the most of their careers by providing personalized career information, giving them better insight into the implications of their decisions. 

“In this field, you can get more information on a book to read, a car to buy or food you eat than you can on the very career that pays for everything you have or do.”
               
                For example, the survey will replace generic statistics such as “people with paralegal certificates earn, on average, 20% more over their careers than those with Bachelors degrees” with smart  comparisons  (based on your education, experience, career goals, work ethic, and more) earn, on average, 34% more over their careers by attending a top 25 paralegal school, feel 42% more satisfied with their career, work 26 hours more per week, and feel 14% more stressed.” 

                Companies are using data to earn larger profits, sports teams are using data to build better teams, and now it’s time for legal professionals to start using data to make the most of their careers.

     OLP has partnered with CareerNumbers.com, an innovative company providing sophisticated salary surveys to the community.  CareerNumbers partners with leading organizations that want to provide their members with free data-driven career and salary information. Employees appreciate that surveys are simple and easy.  The surveys also provide powerful multi-dimensional reporting tools that puts the full-value of the information back into the hands of the people and partners that helped us obtain it.

               OLP’s goal is to help people make the most of their careers by empowering them to better understand themselves and the types of opportunities that are available to them. 
               
                The best way to achieve this is by providing deeper and more meaningful career data. You probably haven’t struggled to access valuable and relevant information for other decisions such as buying a car or even a book. However, when it comes to one of the most important components of your life, your career,there is a consistent struggle to find the information you need to make informed decisions. OLP wants to help solve this  problem for legal professionals because there’s no reason that, as a society, we should have more valuable information about the books we’re buying than the careers we’re living.

Participate in the survey today.   Survey data is free to participants.  It’s anonymous and confidential. Don’t get left out!

Go directly to the survey:    www.theolp.org.  Use invitation code:  Estblog.

"The Data Boom: Can Law Firms Profit?"

Yeah, oh, yeah! Read how in this Legal Technology article about how MoFo responded when a small client was hit with a huge discovery request:

"In the fall of 2005, a small Israeli technology startup came to San Francisco's Morrison & Foerster with a lawsuit -- and, soon enough, a problem.

[snip]

"The stakes weren't particularly high -- just a few million dollars. But after the case was filed, the defendant hit back with an electronic discovery request -- every relevant e-mail, Microsoft Word file, spreadsheet, you name it -- so onerous that its cost alone would take a fair chunk of any judgment.

"'We saw that it was going to take several hundred thousand dollars to do this,' says Oz Benamram, director of knowledge management and Israel practice counsel at MoFo. In fact, there was nothing terribly unique about this situation. As more correspondence and information is stored electronically, e-discovery is requiring more time, and more dollars, than ever before.

"What was different was MoFo's solution. Realizing that the standard way of reviewing documents -- having teams of associates, or lower-priced contract attorneys, sift through anything that could be relevant, deciding what was responsive and had to be turned over, and what was privileged and needed to be kept -- wasn't going to cut it, the firm suggested a radical approach: automate almost everything."

Be sure to read the PROFIT CENTER? section at the very end of this article.

"The authenticity of a found document:

Hmm, interesting problem that can torpedo a case. Does your firm's IT department employ effective document management policies?

"What seems to be the problem? Your IT organization has put in place proper procedures [PDF] for deleting electronic documents, including e-mails. So it is no surprise when as a result of litigation your e-discovery process cannot turn up a particular document. However, to everyone's surprise the document turns up on your CEO's laptop. This is a very possible scenario. You must know whether the document is admissible as evidence in a civil lawsuit.

"What do you need to know? Evidence is admitted in court only if it can be shown that the evidence is authentic. Authentic data must follow a chain-of-custody. So how does this work with a lost document that has now been found?"

Find more key questions for IT in the balance of this article from Storage. 

Author David Hill is the founder and principal at the Mesabi Group...an industry analyst firm that focuses on networked storage and storage management.

"Consultant Compatibility: Take the Quiz"

Always good to have thoughtful checklists for hiring vendors, I say. And this quiz from Legal Technology looks very helpful:

"There's a saying that starts, 'You know you're in trouble if ...' But sometimes, by the time you know you're in trouble, it's too late to start asking 'Why?'

"One example of such a time is with e-discovery and legal technology projects. If you're halfway through the project and run into trouble, backtracking to correct the problem usually isn't an option. A nearly ironclad way around that problem includes proper preparation and having the right team. These are key elements to the success of any legal technology project, from e-discovery to product-implementation schemes to training sessions.

[snip]

"In this article, we offer the nitty-gritty for attorneys and others involved in e-discovery and other legal technology projects. Start the process of answering key questions by taking the consultant compatibility quiz...."

Authors Christin Martin and Kelly Lumpkin are consultants with Simpson Neely Group Inc., which provides technology consulting services to corporate law departments.

"EDD-ucating Yourself About Electronic Discovery"

Not a new article  (Oct. 2006) from the ABA's Law Practice Today, but someone just pointed out that it says something nice about this blog. (How did I miss that!?)

"It was back in July 2004 (http://www.abanet.org/lpm/lpt/articles/slc07041.html) when Tom published the first Strongest Links article on the subject of electronic discovery as part of an influential EDD-themed issue of Law Practice Today.  Since that time, the electronic evidence landscape has changed considerably, and EDD is more important that ever.  With December 1 -- the date the amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure will take effect -- fast approaching, we thought it would be a good idea to revisit those links, and provide an update to those of you who are still learning about the intricacies of e-discovery.  Which, really, is probably all of us.

[snip]

"Weblogs -- Surprisingly, there have not been a lot of weblogs on the subject of EDD.  However, those weblogs that do discuss the topic are terrific. 

[snip]

"The Estrin Report is a group blog created for professional paralegals that often covers electronic discovery topics."

If you're a litigation paralegal, be sure to read the complete article -- it's chock-full of very helpful links!

As as regular readers know, The Estrin Report is all about finding & posting news & other items of interest to you! Your comments, suggestions, even complaints, are appreciated.

Houston's State-of-the-Art Electronic Data Discovery Lab

Ths news sounds wonderful doesn't it? I'd sure like to take a tour!

"UHY Advisors today announced the opening of its newly constructed electronic data discovery lab, a state-of-the-art facility for processing large volumes of electronic evidence and conducting sophisticated computer forensics investigations, at a secure location in downtown Houston.

"The lab is unique for its flexibility to be used for both high-volume electronic data discovery -- including data processing, culling with search terms, de-duplication and file conversion -- and complex digital forensics activities. The facility is  [PDF] secured with biometric locks and the evidence storage 'vault' is also secured with advanced motion detectors."

"Making Forensics Elementary at Your Firm"

Here's another career choice -- computer-forensics examinaton -- in which a paralegal background can be most helpful:

[snip]

"Attorney and e-discovery expert Tom O'Connor, with the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Legal Electronic Document Institute, says that judges in the cases he consults on are ordering e-discovery and computer-forensics investigation much more frequently than ever before. O'Connor is seeing the effect of this change on all kinds of cases.

[snip]

"For civil domestic cases such as divorce proceedings, there's an enormous amount of forensics investigation occurring. O'Connor says that PCs are being examined to prove or refute claims by one spouse that the other has been engaging in extramarital affairs or hiding financial assets. Forensics experts are trained to search for e-mail exchanges in which the parties are setting dates and carrying on other communications. They can also:

• Uncover questionable online purchases;
• Track credit-card transactions; and
• Detect whether credit cards unknown to one spouse are being used to make illicit purchases.

"Stephanie Simons Neal, litigation-support [PDF] project manager in the New York office of Weil Gotshal & Manges, attests to the burgeoning need for forensics expertise at her firm. Simons Neal's caseload consists of a number of patent cases, along with other corporate-litigation matters.

"'We've definitely noticed an increase in request for forensics, as well as requests for review and production of documents in native form as opposed to paper,' she says, adding that while the requests continue to come in, the expertise to meet those requests is lacking and there is a growing 'disconnect' between what cases actually require and what the law firms are equipped to provide.

[snip]

"Trial attorney and certified computer forensic examiner Craig Ball of Austin, TX, has seen a marked increase in the use of forensically qualified imaging to preserve data prior to litigation rather than in reaction to it."

NOTE: This article also says: "Computer forensics is still a young science that's being shaped by the electronic-discovery rules as they continue to evolve and change. This expanding industry simultaneously presents huge opportunities and great responsibility."

"Exterro Gets E-Discovery Down to Business"

Quite readable article about new litigation software -- "centralized management of litigation lifecycles" -- with helpful "show & tell" screenshots:

"Exterro isn't the first software vendor to apply a business-process-management approach to the legal discovery process, but with the launch of its flagship product Fusion, it is breaking new ground with a solution that combines BPM with collaboration capabilities and centralized management in an integrated environment.

"Aimed at law firms and corporate legal departments, Exterro's newly unveiled Fusion is essentially a portal for controlling the discovery process. However, Exterro's chairman and CEO, Bobby Balachandran, prefers to call it a litigation-support-management platform, from which his customers can monitor progress, track costs, set and manage schedules, and evaluate vendor performance.

"'During complex litigation, negotiations or time-intensive governmental investigations, the process of managing legal teams needs some automation, otherwise it all just gets away from them,' Balachandran says. 'We're trying to bring reliable management control and predictability to a process that is typically loaded with surprises and unexpected costs.'"

BTW, there's currently an open position for Litigation Support Consultant (scroll down; position is in Chicago or Portland with flexible work hours!).