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Electronic Discovery

eDiscovery Trends: Potential ESI Sources Abound in Penn State Case
 

Whether you’re a college football fan or not, chances are you’ve heard about the scandal associated with the allegations of serial child abuse by former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky.  There seems to be new developments almost daily and the scandal has already cost the jobs of the university president, vice president, athletic director and the head football coach, Joe Paterno, who had been head coach since 1965 and on the coaching staff since 1950 (most of us weren’t even born yet!).  Numerous lawsuits seem highly likely to arise as a result of the alleged abuse against a variety of defendants, including the university, individuals alleged to be involved in the abuse and cover-up and also the Second Mile Foundation founded by Sandusky.

Seth Row, an attorney with Parsons Farnell & Grein LLP in Portland (OR), has written an article published in the Association of Certified eDiscovery Specialists (ACEDS) web site providing a detailing of potential sources of ESI that may be relevant in the case.  The article illustrates the wide variety of sources that might be responsive to the litigation.  Here are some of the sources cited by Row:

  • Videotape of entry and exit from the athletic facilities at Penn State, to which Paterno gave Sandusky access after the latter resigned in 1999;
  • Entry/exit logs, which are likely housed in a database if keycards were used, for the Lasch Football Building, where abuse was allegedly witnessed
  • Phone records of incoming and outgoing calls;
  • Electronic rosters of football players, coaches, staff, student interns, and volunteers affiliated with the Penn State football program over time;
  • The personal records of these individuals, including telephone logs, internet search histories, email accounts, medical and financial records, and related information created over time;
  • University listservs;
  • Internet forums – a New York Times article reported last week that a critical break in the investigation came via a posting on the Internet, mentioning that a Penn State football coach might have seen something ugly, but kept silent;
  • Maintenance logs maintained by the two custodial employees who allegedly witnessed abuse;
  • Identities of all media beat reporters who covered the Penn State football team;
  • Passenger and crew manifests for all chartered flights of the Penn State football team in which Sandusky was a passenger;
  • Sandusky's credit card records to document meals and outings where he may have been accompanied by victims, and records of gifts he purchased for them;
  • All records of the Second Mile Foundation identifying boys who participated in its programs, as well as the names of donors and officers, directors and staff;
  • Paper record equivalents of this ESI that were produced in the 1990s before electronic recordkeeping became prevalent;
  • All electronic storage and computing devices owned or maintained by Sandusky, Paterno and other central figures in the scandal, including cell phones, personal computers, tablet computers, flash drives, and related hardware.

With such a wide variation of potential custodians and time frames, it will be difficult to quickly narrow down the potential ESI sources.  As the author points out, it seems likely that Penn State has already locked down its records retention policies throughout the university.  They certainly would seem to have a reasonable expectation of litigation.  Investigators and attorneys will likely be racing against time to identify as many other parties as possible with potentially responsive ESI.

So, what do you think?  Have you been involved in litigation with such a wide distribution of potentially responsive ESI?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

eDiscovery Case Law: Facebook Spoliation Significantly Mitigates Plaintiff’s Win

“Spoliation of evidence” refers to the deliberate destruction of evidence prior to a trial.  It is a rare event in civil litgation.  But, spoliation of evidence was found in a case involving a personal injury lawyer in Virginia.  Lawyer Matthew Murray was ordered to pay $522,000 for instructing his client to remove photos from his Facebook age.  His client was ordered to pay $180,000 for obeying his instructions.  A state district judge issued these sanctions in the case of Lester v. Allied Concrete Co., Nos. CL08-150, CL09-223 (Va. Cir. Ct. Oct. 21, 2011).

Murray was found to have told his client to remove pictures, such as the one of him holding a beer and wearing a t-shirt that said “I ♥ hot moms.”  The client was a recent widower suing about the death of his wife.

In this case, the defendant was able to show via expert testimony that the widower deleted 15 photos from his Facebook account and perhaps a 16th.  The photos were provided to the defendant later, before the trial.  The jury found in favor of Mr. Lester and awarded $10 million.  Subsequent to the trial, the judge ordered that Plaintiff’s counsel provide copies of emails between the lawyer and his client to the court for in camera inspection (i.e., for the judge’s eyes only).  When the district judge ordered production of these emails, he ruled that emails related to Defendant’s request for production were not attorney-client privileged.

This all started when one of the defense lawyers apparently “hacked” into Mr. Lester’s Facebook page via a mutual friend and observed the photos showing Mr. Lester as apparently non too distraught over his wife’s death.

The court found that the plaintiff, Isaiah Lester, lied about his depression and treatment.  The court found that Murray told Lester via email “to clean up” his Facebook page and told the client that “blow-ups” of pictures like the “I [heart] hot moms” photo would cause problems at trial.  Lester deactivated his Facebook page.  A few days later, in responding to discovery requests, the plaintiff said he did not have a Facebook account.  The defendants complained – at this point they knew Lester had or should have a Facebook account.  Murray then asked Lester to reactivate his account.  The plaintiff’s lawyer also provided hard copies of the 16 photos to the defense.

At his subsequent deposition, Mr. Lester lied about what he had done and denied he had deactivated his Facebook account.

Defendants then issued a subpoena duces tecum for emails between Lester and his lawyer for the time period when the request for production was issued.  Plaintiff resisted.  The defense then filed a motion to compel.  The court required a privilege log of the disputed emails.  The judge found the initial privilege log deficient.  When Murray finally produced the incriminating email, he claimed its prior omission was error and blamed the omission on a paralegal, ultimately leading to the sanctions.

So, what do you think?  Were those sanctions fair or were they excessive? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Case Summary Source: San Antonio Employment Law Blog.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

eDiscovery Best Practices: Data Mapping Doesn’t Have to be Complicated
 

Some time ago, we talked about the importance of preparing a data map of your organization’s data to be ready when litigation strikes.

Back then, we talked about four steps to create and maintain an effective data map, including:

  • Obtaining early “buy-in” with various departments throughout the organization;
  • Document and educate to develop logical and comprehensive practices for managing data;
  • Communicate regularly so that new data stores (or changes to existing ones) can be addressed as they occur;
  • Update periodically to keep up with changes in technology that create new data sources.

The data map itself doesn’t have to be complicated.  It can be as simple as a spreadsheet (or series of spreadsheets, one for each department or custodian, depending on what level of information is likely to be requested).  Here are examples of types of information that you might see in a typical data map spreadsheet:

  • Type of Data: Prepare a list and continue to add to it to ensure all of the types or data are considered.  These can include email, work product documents, voice mail, databases, web site, social media content, hard copy documents, and any other type of data in use within your organization.
  • Department/Custodian: A data map is no good unless you identify the department or custodian responsible for the data.  Some of these may be kept by IT (e.g., Exchange servers for the entire organization) while others could be down to the individual level (e.g., Access databases kept on an individual’s laptop).
  • Storage Classification: The method(s) by which the data is stored by the department or custodian is important to track.  You’ll typically have Online, Nearline, Offline and Inaccessible Data.  A type of data can apply to multiple or even all storage classifications.  For example, email can be stored Online in Exchange servers, Nearline in an email archiving system, Offline in backup tapes and Inaccessible in a legacy format.  Therefore, you’ll need a column in your spreadsheet for each storage classification.
  • Retention Policy: Track the normal retention policy for each type of data stored by each department of custodian (e.g., retain email for 5 years).  While a spreadsheet won’t automatically identify when specific data is “expired”, a regular process of looking for data older than the retention time period will enable your organization to purge “expired” data.
  • Litigation Hold Applied: Unless of course, that data is subject to an active litigation hold.  If so, you’ll want to identify the case(s) for which the hold is applied and be prepared to update to remove those cases from the list once the hold obligation is released.  If all holds are released on normally “expired” data and no additional hold obligations are expected, that may be the opportunity to purge that data.
  • Last Update Date: It’s always a good idea to keep track of when the information in the data map was last updated.  If it’s been a while since that last update, it might be time to coordinate with that department or custodian to bring their portion of the data map current.

As you see, a fairly simple 9 or 10 column spreadsheet might be all you need to start gathering information about the data stores in your organization.

So, what do you think?  Has your organization implemented a data mapping program?  If not, why not? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

eDiscovery Case Law: Court Grants Adoption of Model Order for Patent Case

Model orders to limit discovery for patent cases have gained popularity in various jurisdictions, including this recent order proposed in Texas.  Here’s one patent case where the defendant sought to adopt such a model order.

In DCG Sys., Inc. v. Checkpoint Techs., LLC, No. C-11-03792 PSG, (N.D. Cal. Nov. 2, 2011), defendant Checkpoint asked the court to enter a version of the model order. (The proposed version differed from the model order in the number of keywords and custodians and on an issue of metadata.) The court granted defendant’s motion.

Plaintiff DCG objected to the entry of the order. It argued that since this was a case between competitors, and not a case brought by a nonpracticing entity (an “NPE,” or sometimes called a “patent troll”), the discovery would be improperly impeded by the model order’s limitations on email discovery.

NPE or patent troll cases often involve asymmetrical discovery – the plaintiff has few documents but the defendant has many. And some commentators have proposed that the model eDiscovery order seeks to reduce the ill-effects of this asymmetry. In this case plaintiff argued that it would need discovery on legitimate issues that may have arisen with an actual competitor, e.g., whether defendant copied plaintiff’s technology and whether plaintiff was entitled to an injunction. Plaintiff’s argument presupposed that the model order’s limitations would cut into the scope of that purported legitimate discovery.

The court rejected plaintiff’s arguments. It found that: (1) nothing in the model order or the Chief Judge of the Federal Circuit’s speech unveiling the order suggested that it was intended only for NPE cases, and (2) there was no reason to believe that non-NPE (competitor) cases presented less compelling circumstances in which to impose reasonable restrictions on the timing and scope of email discovery.

The court also addressed the notion that the model order would help only in NPE cases or cases involving asymmetrical eDiscovery. It observed that the model order could have double the benefit in competitor cases. If using the model order to relieve the burden on the producing party in an NPE case was a good thing, then using it in a suit between competitors benefit both sides and be twice as good.

So, what do you think?  Are model orders to limit discovery a good idea?  If so, should they apply to other types of cases? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Case Summary Source: Practical eDiscovery Blog, by Hinshaw & Culbertson, LLP.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

eDiscovery 101: Simply Deleting a File Doesn’t Mean It’s Gone
 

This subject came up recently in discussion with one of my clients and since he was confused as to what happens when a file is deleted, I thought it would be worthwhile to discuss the topic on the blog.

Disk drives use an index or table to keep track of where each file begins and ends on the disk.  You may have heard terms such as “FAT” (file allocation table) or NTFS ({Windows} NT File System) – these filing systems enable the file to be retrieved quickly on the drive.  They’re like a “directory” of all of the active files on the disk.  When a file is “deleted” (i.e., actually deleted, not just moved to the Recycle Bin), the data for that file isn’t actually removed from the disk (in most cases).  Instead, the entry pertaining to it is removed from the filing system.  As a result, the area on the disk where the actual data is located becomes unallocated space.

Unallocated space, also known as inactive data or drive free space, is the area of the drive not allocated to active data. On a Windows machine, deleted data is not actually destroyed, but the space on the drive that can be reused to store new information. Until the unallocated space is overwritten with new data, the old data remains.  This data can be retrieved (in most cases) using forensic techniques. On MAC O/S 10.5 and higher, there is an application that overwrites sectors when a file is deleted. This process more securely destroys data, but even then it may be possible to recover data out of unallocated space.

Because the unallocated space on a hard drive or server is that portion of the storage space to which data may be saved, it is also where many applications “temporarily” store files when they are in use. For instance, temporary Internet files are created when a user visits a web page, and these pages may be “cached” or temporarily stored in the unallocated space.  Rebooting a workstation or server can also clear some data from the unallocated space on its drive.

Since computers are dynamic and any computer operation may write data to the drive, it is nearly impossible to preserve data in the unallocated space on the hard drive and that data is not accessible without special software tools. To preserve data from the unallocated space of a hard drive, the data must be forensically collected, which basically copies the entire drive’s contents, including every sector (whether those sectors contain active data or not). Even then, data in the unallocated space may not be complete. Because the unallocated space is used to store new data, writing a new file may overwrite part of a deleted file, leaving only part of that file in the unallocated space.

Nonetheless, “deleted” files have been recovered, collected and produced in numerous lawsuits, despite efforts of some producing parties to destroy that evidence.

So, what do you think?  Have you ever recovered deleted data that was relevant to litigation?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

eDiscovery Best Practices: Could This Be the Most Expensive eDiscovery Mistake Ever?
 

Many of you have Android phones.  I do, as well.  As you may know, Android is Google’s operating system for phones and Android phones have become extraordinarily popular.

However, as noted in this Computerworld UK article, it may be a failure in searching that ironically may cost Google big time in its litigation with Oracle over the Android operating system.

Google is currently involved in a lawsuit with Oracle over license fees associated with Java.  Oracle acquired Java when it purchased Sun Microsystems and many companies license Java.  Java forms a critical part of Google’s Android operating system and Google has leveraged free Android to drive mobile phone users to their ecosystem and extremely profitable searches and advertising.  Android has been so successful for Google that a loss to Oracle could result in billions of dollars in damages.

To cull down a typically large ESI population, Google turned to search technology to help identify potentially responsive and potentially privileged files.  Unfortunately for Google, a key email was produced that could prove damaging to their case.  The email was written by Google engineer Tim Lindholm a few weeks before Oracle filed suit against Google. With Oracle having threatened to sue Google for billions of dollars, Lindholm was instructed by Google executives to identify alternatives to Java for use in Android, presumably to strengthen their negotiating position.

"What we've actually been asked to do (by Larry and Sergey) is to investigate what technical alternatives exist to Java for Android and Chrome," the email reads in part, referring to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. "We've been over a bunch of these, and think they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need."

Lindholm added the words “Attorney Work Product” and sent the email to Andy Rubin (Google’s top Android executive) and Google in-house attorney Ben Lee.  Unfortunately, Lindholm’s computer saved nine drafts of the email while he was writing it – before he added the words and addressed the email to Lee.  Because Lee's name and the words "attorney work product" weren't on the earlier drafts, they weren't picked up by the eDiscovery software as privileged documents, and they were sent off to Oracle's lawyers.

Oracle's lawyers read from the email at two hearings over the summer and Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court in Oakland, California, indicated to Google's lawyers that it might suggest willful infringement of Oracle's patents.  Google filed a motion to "clawback" the email on the grounds it was "unintentionally produced privileged material." Naturally, Oracle objected, and after a three-month legal battle, Alsup refused last month to exclude the document at trial.

How did Google let such a crucial email slip through production?  It’s difficult to say without fully knowing their methodology.  Did they rely too much on technology to identify files for production without providing a full manual review of all files being produced?  Or, did manual review (which can be far from perfect) let the email slip through as well?  Conceivably, organizing the documents into clusters, based on similar content, might have grouped the unsent drafts with the identified “attorney work product” final version and helped to ensure that the drafts were classified as intended.

So, what do you think?  Could this mistake cost Google billions?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

 

eDiscovery Case Law: KPMG Denied in Request for “Proportionality Test” to Preservation

In Pippins v. KPMG LLP, No. 11 Civ. 0377 (CM)(JLC), (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 7, 2011), defendant’s request for a protective order allowing it to maintain only a random sample of 100 hard drives from 2,500 laptops or to require plaintiffs to bear the cost of maintaining 2,500 hard drives was denied.

It was not shown that information on the hard drives was duplicative, and it was too early in the litigation to know whether the cost of maintaining the hard drives was proportional to plaintiffs’ potential recovery. In an action concerning whether accountants should be considered exempt employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act, defendant sought an order allowing it to preserve only a random sample of 100 hard drives from laptops of former and departing accountant employees. Defendant already was preserving almost 2,500 such hard drives at a cost of $1.5 million. As an alternative, defendant sought an order requiring plaintiffs to bear the cost of maintaining more than 100 of the hard drives.

Plaintiffs were willing to use sampling to lessen the number of hard drives but contended that a random sample of the hard drives would not be a meaningful sample. Plaintiffs also contended that keyword searching of the random samples suggested by defendant was outmoded and not likely to cull out information sought by plaintiffs, including work product and hours worked by defendant’s accountant associates. Plaintiffs sought an order requiring production of five of the hard drives for inspection so that the parties could negotiate a resolution to the hard drive preservation issue. The court denied defendant’s motion for a protective order and directed defendant to preserve hard drives of members of the New York class that plaintiffs sought to represent.

While the court considered defendant’s preservation efforts “comprehensive,” it did not appear that other information being preserved duplicated information on the hard drives. Also, the cost of preserving the hard drives could be substantial but it was too early to know whether that cost would be proportional to the value of the litigation. The court added that courts in the Southern District of New York “have cautioned against the application of a proportionality test as it relates to preservation.” While the court would not order defendant to provide plaintiffs with five sample hard drives, it encouraged the parties to seek agreement on sampling pending a ruling on class certification and a lifting of the stay of discovery in the action.

So, what do you think?  Do proportionality and preservation mix?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Case Summary Source: Applied Discovery (free subscription required).  For eDiscovery news and best practices, check out the Applied Discovery Blog here.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine Discovery. eDiscoveryDaily is made available by CloudNine Discovery solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscoveryDaily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

eDiscovery Rewind: Eleven for 11-11-11
 

Since today is one of only 12 days this century where the month, day and year are the same two-digit numbers (not to mention the biggest day for “craps” players to hit Las Vegas since July 7, 2007!), it seems an appropriate time to look back at some of our recent topics.  So, in case you missed them, here are eleven of our recent posts that cover topics that hopefully make eDiscovery less of a “gamble” for you!

eDiscovery Best Practices: Testing Your Search Using Sampling: On April 1, we talked about how to determine an appropriate sample size to test your search results as well as the items NOT retrieved by the search, using a site that provides a sample size calculator. On April 4, we talked about how to make sure the sample set is randomly selected. In this post, we’ll walk through an example of how you can test and refine a search using sampling.

eDiscovery Best Practices: Your ESI Collection May Be Larger Than You Think: Here’s a sample scenario: You identify custodians relevant to the case and collect files from each. Roughly 100 gigabytes (GB) of Microsoft Outlook email PST files and loose “efiles” is collected in total from the custodians. You identify a vendor to process the files to load into a review tool, so that you can perform first pass review and, eventually, linear review and produce the files to opposing counsel. After processing, the vendor sends you a bill – and they’ve charged you to process over 200 GB!! What happened?!?

eDiscovery Trends: Why Predictive Coding is a Hot Topic: Last month, we considered a recent article about the use of predictive coding in litigation by Judge Andrew Peck, United States magistrate judge for the Southern District of New York. The piece has prompted a lot of discussion in the profession. While most of the analysis centered on how much lawyers can rely on predictive coding technology in litigation, there were some deeper musings as well.

eDiscovery Best Practices: Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?: Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care? OK, it’s an old song by Chicago (back then, they were known as the Chicago Transit Authority). But, the question of what time it really is has a significant effect on how eDiscovery is handled.

eDiscovery Best Practices: Message Thread Review Saves Costs and Improves Consistency: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. But, in ESI review, it can be even worse when you get a different result. Most email messages are part of a larger discussion, which could be just between two parties, or include a number of parties in the discussion. To review each email in the discussion thread would result in much of the same information being reviewed over and over again. Instead, message thread analysis pulls those messages together and enables them to be reviewed as an entire discussion.

eDiscovery Best Practices: When Collecting, Image is Not Always Everything: There was a commercial in the early 1990s for Canon cameras in which tennis player Andre Agassi uttered the quote that would haunt him for most of his early career – “Image is everything.” When it comes to eDiscovery preservation and collection, there are times when “Image is everything”, as in a forensic “image” of the media is necessary to preserve all potentially responsive ESI. However, forensic imaging of media is usually not necessary for Discovery purposes.

eDiscovery Trends: If You Use Auto-Delete, Know When to Turn It Off: Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(f), adopted in 2006, is known as the “safe harbor” rule. While it’s not always clear to what extent “safe harbor” protection extends, one case from a few years ago, Disability Rights Council of Greater Washington v. Washington Metrop. Trans. Auth., D.D.C. June 2007, seemed to indicate where it does NOT extend – auto-deletion of emails.

eDiscovery Best Practices: Checking for Malware is the First Step to eDiscovery Processing: A little over a month ago, I noted that we hadn’t missed a (business) day yet in publishing a post for the blog. That streak almost came to an end back in May. As I often do in the early mornings before getting ready for work, I spent some time searching for articles to read and identifying potential blog topics and found a link on a site related to “New Federal Rules”. Curious, I clicked on it and…up popped a pop-up window from our virus checking software (AVG Anti-Virus, or so I thought) that the site had found a file containing a “trojan horse” program. The odd thing about the pop-up window is that there was no “Fix” button to fix the trojan horse. So, I chose the best available option to move it to the vault. Then, all hell broke loose.

eDiscovery Trends: An Insufficient Password Will Thwart Even The Most Secure Site: Several months ago, we talked about how most litigators have come to accept that Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) systems are secure. However, according to a recent study by the Ponemon Institute, the chance of any business being hacked in the next 12 months is a “statistical certainty”. No matter how secure a system is, whether it’s local to your office or stored in the “cloud”, an insufficient password that can be easily guessed can allow hackers to get in and steal your data.

eDiscovery Trends: Social Media Lessons Learned Through Football: The NFL Football season began back in September with the kick-off game pitting the last two Super Bowl winners – the New Orleans Saints and the Green Bay Packers – against each other to start the season. An incident associated with my team – the Houston Texans – recently illustrated the issues associated with employees’ use of social media sites, which are being faced by every organization these days and can have eDiscovery impact as social media content has been ruled discoverable in many cases across the country.

eDiscovery Strategy: "Command" Model of eDiscovery Must Make Way for Collaboration: In her article "E-Discovery 'Command' Culture Must Collapse" (via Law Technology News), Monica Bay discusses the old “command” style of eDiscovery, with a senior partner leading his “troops” like General George Patton – a model that summit speakers agree is "doomed to failure" – and reports on the findings put forward by judges and litigators that the time has come for true collaboration.

So, what do you think?  Did you learn something from one of these topics?  If so, which one?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

eDiscoveryDaily would like to thank all veterans and the men and women serving in our armed forces for the sacrifices you make for our country.  Thanks to all of you and your families and have a happy and safe Veterans Day!

Marketing a Litigation Support / eDiscovery Department within a Law Firm: Closing Thoughts
 

In the past few weeks we’ve talked about various marketing techniques and mechanisms that — in my experience — work well in a law firm.  In closing, I have just a few additional thoughts I’d like to share with you on the subject.

  • Whether you realize it or not, everyone in the department is involved in marketing.  Your clients’ interactions with department members form their impression of your services.  Everyone in the department, therefore, is contributing in a positive, neutral, or negative way to marketing.  Work with the members of your department to ensure that everyone is contributing in a positive way.  Make sure that everyone is projecting a spirit of cooperation and an eagerness to help.
  • You want your clients to see you as a peer.  You don’t want to be viewed as “the help”.  You want the relationship to be one of partnership.  How do you make this happen?  First, practice the techniques we covered for building good relationships and for providing suburb customer service.  Next, be confident in what you know and what you can do.  You are the expert.  You want your clients to see you as such.  And last, project the right image.  Look and act like you belong in your client’s environment.  
  • Always remember that everyone you talk to in the firm is a potential customer or has links to a potential customer.  So every interaction you have should be viewed as a marketing opportunity.
  • Make this a goal:  Everyone in the firm will know who you are, what you do, how you can solve their problems, and how they can reach you.

I hope you enjoyed this series on marketing litigation support services within a law firm.  Let us know what you think.  And be sure to let us know if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Marketing a Litigation Support / eDiscovery Department within a Law Firm: Keeping Existing Customers, Part 2
 

In the last post in this series, we began talking about marketing techniques for keeping the customers you have.  The first point we covered was continuously reminding your customers of the services that you offer.  The second thing you need to do is to look for new ways to help the customers that you have.

You have a significant advantage here… you know the litigation process, you know how attorneys work, and you know what they need.  In short, you know what’s coming.  Be proactive.  Anticipate what your clients will need and let them know how you can help.  And if their needs are outside the scope of what you do, determine if that work should and could be within the scope of your offerings.  You may uncover ways to expand your department’s services.

The last – and probably most effective – way to keep existing customers is to provide suburb customer service.  All the time.  Without fail.  You need to treat your clients well; you need to get them what they need, when they need it; and you need to make it very easy and painless for your clients to work with you.  Establish customer service guidelines for your staff and establish top priorities for the department.  At a minimum, the department’s priorities should include meeting deadlines, delivering high quality work, and effectively communicating with clients.

Customer service guidelines include things like making sure that it’s easy for clients to reach you and being responsive to phone calls and email.  You need to make sure your staff is trained in dealing with clients.  For example, make sure that everyone on your staff knows the right way to respond if client is unhappy about something.

Tomorrow, we’ll conclude this blog series on Marketing a Litigation Support / eDiscovery Department within a Law Firm.  Let us know if you’ve got any questions or comments.  And be sure to let us know if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.