LitWorks » collaboration

Case Law Summaries or When Things Don’t Quite Workout the Way You Planned

esantiago — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:33:38 +0000

As Litigation Support Professionals, sometimes it helps to have a story about what happens when e-discovery best practices are not followed. It helps us to understand the end result of the work we are typically involved in earlier in the lifecycle of a matter. The ESI processing (or conversion) that we are managing today will become next week’s document review database and later a production deliverable. The decisions about the form of production are often made by the attorneys well before we get involved in the matter and it has been my experience that many of the discovery disputes or mishaps could have been avoided had a Litigation Support Professional been engaged earlier in the litigation matter. But that’s a discussion for another post on another day… Earlier this week, someone asked me for a list of cases or case examples that present teachable moments regarding sanctions, preservation & collection, document productions, etc. I thought it would be useful to list a few of the websites that offer a neutral summary of recent cases as examples of what not to do in e-discovery. (I wish someone would start a site that shares case examples of when things go well…..)

E-Lessons Learned
K&L Gates – Electronic Discovery Law
Arkfeld’s E-Law Exchange
e-Discovery Team
Quarles & Brady’s E-Discovery Bytes
Post Process Blog EDD Bibliography

There are many other sites that provide case law summaries, these are just a few.

Are you a good listener?

esantiago — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:00:04 +0000

Communication skills are extremely important for litigation support professionals to master. There are many blogs and articles devoted to the subject… we cover it in all three of our classes at LitWorks. Today, I’m interested in discussing the lost art of communicating in person. Some might refer to it as interpersonal skills or the art of conversation… In our classes, we discuss the responsibilities of the “sender” and the “receiver” and asking lots of follow up questions. Sending e-mails around to our case teams provides us with the security of a virtual paper trail and project documentation. However, sometimes we must step out of our comfort zone (and our cubicle) to meet face-to-face with an attorney or paralegal to discuss important technology decisions for the litigation matter.

The bottom line is that if you really want to effectively communicate something, especially if it is important and will need some discussion, there is nothing as good as face-to-face communication. If that is impractical, if you really want to communicate, pick up the phone and talk. My guess is that many people avoid these two methods because they find it more difficult, and places them outside their “comfort zone.” Effective communication necessitates doing what is necessary, and not simply developing a dependency on these less effective, but certainly easier techniques. Continue…

Be sure that you completely understand all of the options available and have prepared possible answers to your follow up questions before you engage in a face-to-face meeting. Then you will be ready to listen. Listening or “receiving“ information is just as important as “sending” or speaking.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to read more about being a good listener.

Twitter as a Continuing Education Tool

esantiago — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:25:38 +0000

Do you micro-blog? Do you have a Twitter account? If so, are you following LitWorks? [click here to follow us] Have you considered that Twitter can be used not only as a social networking resource, but also as a tool to stay current on e-discovery / litigation support industry trends, news and information?

You don’t have to register for a Twitter account to read someone’s micro-blog site. You can simply point your browser to www.twitter.com/LitWorks_DTI and you can view all of our tweets (for example). However, it is a lot easier to “follow” someone if you actually have a Twitter account yourself. While it’s strongly encouraged as a two-way street, I really don’t see the harm in following and never actually saying anything yourself.

Using Twitter as an educational resource is simple.

Determine who’s tweets you will follow. I recommend that you start with folks listed on Tweet Discovery.com. Look for people who post links to interesting articles, blog posts and white papers that are relevant to your role as a Litigation Support Professional. Also, note who they follow… are they following people from outside of our industry? For example, we follow other trainers and project managers whether they are litigation support / e-discovery specific or not. If their tweets add value to our learning & research objectives, then we follow them.
Create a List & Get Organized. It is very difficult to keep up with hundreds of tweets every day. Creating a Twitter List will allow you to organize your Twitter feed into categories. You can also follow someone else’s list.
Define Your Personal Brand on Twitter. If you plan to re-tweet or post your own tweets (sharing information is strongly encouraged), be sure that you’ve selected a Twitter identity that is consistent with your personal brand. Remember, your current and future employers might read your posts… This topic recently came up on The Posse List blog here.

Working with Virtual Litigation Support Teams

esantiago — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:55:13 +0000

Litigation support departments are very often a virtual team of people spread out around the country or the world.

Join our ongoing discussion of communication best practices for project management in litigation & e-discovery by commenting/ responding to the following questions:

How do you communicate with each other?
How do you share resources?
How are the resources managed?
- at the local level?
- at the regional level?

Working with virtual litigation support teams will include embracing new media and technology designed for effective project management. Recently, Paul Easton listed a number of project management collaboration tools on his blog that you may find useful.