Ad Litem Consulting, Inc.

Ad Litem Consulting, Inc.
Technical Standards
   Includes:
     - Load Files
     - Cost Codes
     - Quotes
     - For Vendors
     - For Firms

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Read about litigation tech strategies and best practices for the case and firm.
Litigation Support Department
Includes:
   - Budget Spreadsheet
   - Needs Assesment
   - Case Technology Plan
   - Task and Check Lists
   - Member's Area Access

    

Homepage

Intro
Acknowledgements
License
Preface
1.00 Introduction
1.01 For Vendors
1.02 For Firms
1.03 How to Use This Document
2.00 Business Standards
2.01 Outgoing Media Kit
2.02 Cost Codes for Litigation Support
2.03 Request for Quotes ("RFQs")
2.04 Quotes
2.05 Weekly Updates
2.06 Color Blindness
2.07 Quality Control
2.08 Required Test Load
3.00 Technical Standards
3.01 Media Labels
3.02 File, Folder and Volume Naming
3.03 CD Content and Organization
3.04 Organization of Sub-Folders
3.05 Bates Schemes
3.06 Data Files
3.07 Database Conventions
3.08 Native Files
3.09 Project Specifications Document
3.10 Bibliographical Coding Manual
3.11 Image Format
3.12 OCR
3.13 Slip-Sheets or Unitization Rules
3.14 Video
3.15 Synchronization
3.16 Transcripts
3.17 Delivery Media
4.00 Software Specific Requirements
4.01 Casesoft Suite
4.02 IPRO
4.03 Dataflight's Concordance and Opticon
4.04 Image Capture Engineering
4.05 Summation
4.06 iCONECT
4.07 inData TrialDirector
4.nn Additional Titles to Follow
5.00 Examples of What Not To Do
5.01 Media Labels
5.02 File / Folder / Volume Name Conventions
5.03 Database
5.04 Media Content
5.05 Load Files
5.06 OCR
5.07 Opticon Load Files
5.08 Image Format
5.09 Transcripts
5.10 General Errors / Issues
5.11 Real Experiences




5.02 File / Folder / Volume Name Conventions - Technical Standards




  1. Tilde or otherwise truncated file or folder names. As example, AAA0000001.TIF versus AAA000~1.TIF and D:\PROGRAM FILES\ versus D:\PROGRA~1\. Whenever possible, volume, file and folder names should not be wider than eight (8) characters with a suffix not wider than three (3) characters. In technical circles, this is known as the “16-bit” or “MS-DOS 8.3” naming convention.

  2. Use of spaces or any characters in a load file that Windows does not allow in a file or folder name. This seems obvious, but we have received deliveries from vendors who used characters in the database that were not valid in the filename. This resulted in files that would either not copy to the server or would copy with strange naming results. We don’t know what kind of software or operating system this vendor used to create their product, but they certainly never tried to load it themselves.

  3. I will not name the vendor, but on several separate projects they used VENDOR001 as the volume name. If used, my server could have a dozen VENDOR001 CDs. If the filenames do not have the full image key, e.g. “0000001.TIF”, there is no quick way to determine the associated database, client or matter.

  4. Missing or empty folders are a big red flag. If your image folder contains 3 subfolders named 012, 014 and 015, your first inclination is to ask what happened to 001-011 and 013. This just isn’t right on any level. It leads me to assume there will be problems with the data, specifically missing images.
©2006 Ad Litem Consulting, Inc. - Litigation Support Services