I am the first one to admit that I can be hard on service providers because my expectations are pretty high. However, I have been told by several service providers that while I can be a pain sometimes, I am also fair and reasonable. Some of them actually enjoy working
When collecting documents in a litigation case, there can be electronic documents as well as hardcopy documents. Most of the time the hardcopy documents will be sent to a vendor to scan into a TIFF format that can easily be added to a document review database. The hardcopy documents will
Last week I was on the phone chatting with my friend, Shimmy (Shimmy is the guy in the video with me). We were talking about football and more specifically, I was talking about my Philadelphia Eagles. I was explaining to Shimmy that I am disappointed in my team this year
In the electronic discovery industry, we deal primarily with data in its electronic form. However, there are instances where we receive requests to print the electronic documents to paper. The term we use for this is “blowback”. This term originated from the microfilm and microfiche industry. Typically, the electronic documents
This message is directed towards hiring managers in litigation support at law firms, corporations or service providers. If you are reading this and you know of a hiring manager that falls into this category, please forward this notice. I have been spending a good deal of time talking to people
Name: Lana Schell Location: Philadelphia, PA What kind of work were you doing before litigation support found you? Law school trying to figure out what to do when I graduated that did not involve practicing. How did you get the opportunity to join the litigation support community? I worked at a
Whew! It’s been a busy and wildly fulfilling couple of months. I finished up teaching another semester at Georgetown University and I enjoyed getting to know the students in my class. I’ve also been spending time with the summer intensive students. These students jam a year long program into 10
Today is my wedding anniversary. It is marriage number 2 for me. I married Kel (short for Kelbert) 4 years ago on August 8, 2008. The date was a suggestion by a dear friend of mine, Margaret Havinga. She thought it would be cool to have an anniversary date of
I am sure you have heard of the expression, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Well, I believe that expression should apply to litigation support professionals. In many of the cases we work on, we are exchanging production data with opposing counsel or we are
Name: Audrey Hillyard Location: Washington, DC What kind of work were you doing before litigation support found you? It found me right out of school. How did you get the opportunity to join the litigation support community? I started working for a management consulting firm and was immediately placed on a
During the data collection process, the technicians may use EnCase software to collect a forensic image of a computer. That Encase image data may land on your desk. Most of the time the Encase data will be sent to a service provider for extraction and processing. However, there are instances
Name: Jane Gennarelli Location: San Antonio, Texas What kind of work were you doing before litigation support found you? I had a temporary position as a paralegal with the law department of a major US corporation. I traveled to the company’s various facilities reviewing documents to identify those to be produced.
If you do not have a professional presence on LinkedIn, you are making a huge mistake. LinkedIn is for entrepreneurs and professionals. Aside from the networking component of the site, which I will save for a future article, it is no longer okay to be indifferent about your LinkedIn profile. Even
As a litigation support professional, one of our responsibilities is to make sure we understand the Do’s and Don’ts of dealing with electronic discovery. One of the issues we need to keep an eye on is Spoliation. Electronic documents collected, reviewed and produced in a litigation matter need to stay
There are some tools that we use in litigation support that are similar, yet different. An example of this is the text editors we use. In a previous article, I referenced the TextPad text editor. Another text editor we use is called UltraEdit. Personally, I like some features in UltraEdit
Name: Tanya White Location: Sydney, Australia What kind of work were you doing before litigation support found you? I was an IT software trainer for a law firm. How did you get the opportunity to join the litigation support community? I was ‘internally seconded’ to provide dedicated IT/Software support to a
When you are ready to start looking for an entry-level position in litigation support, you will need to tweak your resume so that you stand out from the crowd. When I was a litigation support manager, I would skim the resumes and put them into two piles. One was the
The year is 1996. I had been with a DC law firm for only 9 months in a Legal Trainer role when I was called into the Administrator’s office and handed a pink slip. I was one of forty people laid off that day. The administrator was a kind man
These are a couple of tips that you might find useful when using the TextPad text editor. Be sure to practice these tips so you will be ready when the time comes. Current Line Delete Duplicate Lines If you would like to use a free text editor to delete duplicate
Name: Carolyn Robinson Location: Detroit, MI What kind of work were you doing before litigation support found you? Prior to working as a Litigation Support Manager and as a Adjunct Professor of eDiscovery and Litigation Support, I worked in the legal arena as a Legal Records Clerk, a Law Librarian, a
I left the office at 10:00 pm this evening. A set of production documents had to get out to the vendor so that they have enough time to turn it around to meet our desired production date. It’s funny, at times. Everyone else will leave the office once their sign-off
When a new matter is presented to litigation support, we typically request a meeting with the legal team and we like to refer to this meeting as a Project Design Meeting. Since the majority of our role is project management and we are methodical in our work, this meeting should
Regardless of the database software you are using, there are some standard data types. There may be a slight variation in the actual name of the data type and there might be a slight difference in the specifications for the data type depending on the database software, but for the
Every year in the electronic discovery industry a “hot new something” happens that causes a stir and the next thing we know that “hot new something” is all everyone in the industry is talking about. All of the bloggers start blogging about it to share their pro or con opinions.
Name: Jeff Nace Location: Washington, DC What kind of work were you doing before litigation support found you? I started in the legal industry as a Database/Litigation Analyst for a large international firm in the Midwest that specialized in product liability litigation. I assisted with the implementation of internally developed software
In most situations where you need a forensic expert for a litigation case, you will hire a consultant. However, there are situations where it may make sense to do it yourself. Personally, there have only been a few cases where I felt comfortable doing this kind of work myself. Sometimes
Although there are many expectations I have of the service providers that I prefer to work with, there are two that I would like to discuss today. 1. A good service provider “in my mind” is one that will answer their phone when I call at 6:00 pm on a
One of the common confusions for those trying to get into a litigation support position are the varying job titles. If you ask several people already in litigation support, you will probably get different answers. That is because there is no official list of job titles in litigation support. Each
Name: Matthew Golab Location: Sydney, Australia What kind of work were you doing before litigation support found you? Law libraries – back in the day when Unix databases ruled the world, some of the library databases were also used for litigation such as BRS. How did you get the opportunity to
There is no quick fix or magic potion to becoming a litigation support professional. It takes time, focus, initiative and practice. It is difficult to understand how many different facets there are to the role of litigation support until you’ve actually done the job for a while. Unlike some other
Michael Arkfeld is one of the very first litigators that I began to learn from when litigation technology was in its infancy. Michael was a frequent speaker at the conferences I attended. He always impressed me with his style and his knowledge. I purchased all of his books over the
Name: Renee Lloyd Location: Washington, DC What kind of work were you doing before litigation support found you? I was employed as a word processor with a law firm. I decided to pursue a degree with a focus on computer technology. During my training, I discovered I had a strong
There is a recurring theme in many of the articles on this site and that is the fact that a major portion of our litigation support role relates to dealing with electronic data files. Many of the tools we use help us deal with the data in different ways. One
One of the ways that litigation support professionals transfer data from one entity to another is the use of FTP (File Transfer Protocol). I know there is debate in our industry about whether or not FTP is the best choice, but in reality, it is being used on a daily
You have made the decision to pursue a career in litigation support. You have the task of convincing a hiring manager that you have what it takes. You have the ambition and desire. Your background may include technical skills or it may include experience in the legal industry or it
Name: Nate Emmerson Location: Cincinnati, Ohio What kind of work were you doing before litigation support found you? My undergraduate degrees are actually in classics (Greek, Latin, and ancient history) and music performance. After a year in graduate school, I decided to leave academia and applied to law school while
Many litigation support professionals are processing electronic discovery at a service provider (or in-house) and then loading the data into a Concordance database. When an attorney begins to review the documents, one of the first things they want to do is sort the documents in date order. If they simply
When I first started in litigation support, the workload was fairly light and there was still uncertainty as to what services a litigation support professional would offer to the legal teams. As the years passed, the workload increased and the team grew. Several years after litigation support became a recognized
It is inevitable that you will have a bad day in litigation support. Bad days in litigation support can be a little different than other careers. Since the job includes many roles within a day and we have so many people relying on us, there can be a variety of
Name: Mike McDonald Location: Cleveland, Ohio What kind of work were you doing before litigation support found you? I transferred into litigation support from my role as a paralegal. My college degree is in audio production. Prior to entering the legal industry I worked as an audio engineer and had
With the increasing concerns related to data security and privacy issues across many industries, the legal industry has been forced to implement security around the transfer of electronic discovery collected in litigation matters. Hard drives, thumb drives and DVDs alike, many litigation support professionals are encrypting the data prior to
One of the services we provide as a litigation support professional is the role of User Support. We are inundated at times with telephone calls or e-mails from users asking for help. One type of question that we receive on a regular basis relates to software support. The user is
In litigation support, when we learn of a new matter, one of the first questions we ask is whether the e-mail that will be collected is in Outlook format. The reason we ask this question is because the second most popular e-mail format is Lotus Notes. Some companies are still
In terms of electronic discovery data, most of the e-mail we deal with comes from Microsoft Outlook. The server version of Outlook is called Microsoft Exchange. The client version is called Microsoft Outlook. Since most businesses are using Outlook in their course of business, we end up collecting Outlook data
Name: Julie Carmona Location: Columbus, Ohio What kind of work were you doing before litigation support found you? I was a trial paralegal for about 13 years. How did you get the opportunity to join the litigation support community? I moved to Columbus, Ohio in 2003 from Dallas, Texas and
I have been working in litigation support a long time and one of the interesting things about the field is where the firm or service provider decides to locate the litigation support team. For years, our team was located near the Records Department and our team had cubicle workstations in
Last week, the Washington DC office of the law firm of Cleary Gottlieb opened its doors to entry-level litigation support candidates. A few weeks earlier, I was contacted by Alex Billeb, the Practice Administrator at Cleary. She encouraged me to attend the event and she asked me to invite any
One of the tasks that fill our day in litigation support is what I like to call “manipulating data”. One of the ways we need to manipulate data is by renaming a list of files. There are a number of scenarios where this renaming task needs to be completed, but
Technology and the practice of law are intertwined now. There is no going back. Attorneys are consistently being put in the position of having to explain to their clients the steps that need to take place (and the associated costs) with regard to the electronic documents before we can produce
Name: Jere W. Wilson Location: Hartford, CT What kind of work were you doing before litigation support found you? My entire career has been in various aspects of the IT field. After working in the industry as an employee for nine years, I started my own IT consulting company. I
Running a litigation support department can be similar to being an entrepreneur. Many of the managerial aspects are the same. There is definitely a marketing component for both. Providing excellent service to our clients is not any different than running a business and retaining clients. There are even some litigation
