Corporate Counsel - Evaluating Firm Litigation Support Services
As we all know, cases are not won or lost by legal wisdom alone. The goods and services the team employs from day 1 of a case will greatly effect the speed, accuracy and accountability of the rest of the efforts. A document review team that can burn through twice as many documents as their opposition will have more time to prepare. This much is obvious. What is not always obvious from outside the firm is what kind of support structure the litigation team enjoys (if any).
You wouldn’t hire an attorney who did not have email and word processing. You might not even hire said attorney if they don’t use the right word processor (remember when all the firms switched from WP to Word?). So, what if you discovered your legal eagles had no technology plan for handling your ediscovery?
War Story -
This is a true story. I won’t say anything beyond that.
An employee of ACME company wrote emails while off-line. The same employee was fired and they never had a chance to reconnect to the network, so, the emails sat in the person’s outbox. ACME’s IT Department backed-up the PST file, where it sat until required by litigation. The attorneys needed it, along with other PSTs, for review.
Note: Outlook, which most of us use, will wait patiently until it sees there is a network/internet connection and then automatically send any emails in the outbox.
So, one day, a CD from the client appears on the litigator’s desk. He, or she, copied the PST to their PC, so they could get a first glance.
Outlook, seeing emails in the new PST’s outbox, immediately sent those emails.
You can imagine the surprise by various people when they received emails from a previously fired employee. Now imagine if those emails went to the wrong people. — A recipe for disaster!
How did this happen?
A lack of protocols on the part of the firm, or adherence to them by the litigator.
Electronic discovery and litigation support can be expensive. A lack of a technology plan and protocols will almost always result in higher bills, longer turnaround times, slower review and, potentially, a former employee’s emails getting sent (from the litigator’s desk) to whomever.
Corporate counsel needs to look at both the credentials of the litigators and what litigation support protocols and services they will employ. As stated, no one would hire an attorney who did not have email. What about an attorney or firm that has no technology plan or litigation support services?