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In the late 1970s and early 1980s, very few law firms had internal litigation support resources:  firms did not have litigation support staff or technology.  In 1985, I was offered a litigation support position at a major New York City law firm (which I didn’t accept),,, that’s about when large firms began developing internal litigation support capabilities.  Up until then, most litigation teams relied on vendor services and tools, and more often than not litigation team attorneys were directly involved in working with vendors to design and build databases. In 1980 I took a project management position with a vendor, responsible for overseeing database-building projects. In the next few blog posts, I’m going to describe a typical project and how things worked.

The Vendor Selection Process: This of course was not a ‘step in the project’ – it was part of the sales process. It’s worth mentioning here though, because this was a very big deal, on every project. Because databases were only built for the huge, bet-your-company cases, every project was a big project. For any given project, a vendor would receive a Request for Proposal, which usually required a voluminous, detailed response.

Database Design and Planning: We often spent days in meetings with attorneys designing and planning a database.  Back then, full text wasn’t included in databases and images weren’t included in databases.  That meant that the information that was “coded” for a document was very, very important — It was the only thing in the database.  We needed to learn about a case, learn about the documents, and find out how the attorneys expected to use the documents – this was necessary so that we could advise litigation teams on a coding scheme that would meet their needs.  Remember, this was back before PCs. Back before the Internet. Back before Google. Business people — as a rule — did not understand databases or searching. We, as vendors and consultants needed to be educators, and we needed to advise our attorney clients and recommend – on a case-by-case basis — a design that would meet their needs.

Project Preparation: Sometimes we did projects at our vendor facility, and other times clients requested that we establish a ‘coding operation’ at their site. In either case, we needed to assemble a team of coders. These were usually temporary employees hired for a specific project. Since all the cases we did were big cases, the teams were often substantial. It wasn’t at all unusual to start with a team of 50 or more. The largest project I worked on used a coding team of over 1,000. Of course there were other preparation tasks, but assembling the coding team was the most time consuming. When ever possible, we used people from prior projects, but inevitably, project managers spent a lot of time interviewing candidates for coding positions on every new project.

In next week’s post, we’ll talk more about how a coding project worked.

Please let us know if there are eDiscovery topics you’d like to see us cover in eDiscoveryDaily.

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.

 

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the business world looked very different than it does today, and the field of litigation support looked very different than it does today.  Let me paint a picture for you…

• Mainframe and mini computers were in use in many large and some mid-sized businesses.  They were, however, ‘back-office’ functions.  You didn’t see computers on office desks.  A few desks did have computer terminals, but not many. Disk drives with a capacity measured in the low hundreds of megabytes were the size of washing machines.
• Although precursors to the internet were in early stages, only ‘computer geeks’ knew about it (and there weren’t that many computer geeks).
• For the most part, law firms – even very large firms – did not have internal litigation support database tools.  Litigation databases were stored and accessed on the mainframe computers of service providers, which offered ‘time-share’ services.  Typically, those service providers charged a monthly storage fee based on the size of a database, and a per-hour charge for usage.
• The timeshare databases were accessed with computer terminals – also called ‘dumb’ terminals.  Those terminals did not have screens.  Rather, you inserted a roll of thermal paper, which was ‘spit-out’ with search results (you always needed an ample supply of paper rolls so you weren’t in a bind when the paper ran out during a search session).  You hooked a telephone receiver to an acoustic coupler on the terminal, dialed the computer’s phone number, waited for the high-pitched, scratchy screech that indicated a successful connection, and then queried the database.
• Databases consisted primarily of “coded” information like dates, authors, recipients, titles, and so on.  Many databases included ‘subject coding’.  There were no images included in litigation databases back then, and including full text didn’t get legs in the litigation support world until the mid to late 1980s.
• Database search engines did not provide WYSIWYG interfaces or menu options.  You entered precise search commands like “Find Author=Smith-JA and Type=Letter”.
• Most law firms did not have litigation support professionals on staff.  That work was handled by service providers.
• Those service providers offered, for the most part, document coding services.  There were only a handful of service providers, and those providers offered services nationally.  When I took my first vendor job (in 1980), we had 5 main competitors and found ourselves all bidding on the same jobs.  The litigation support community was small, and we pretty much all knew each other.
• No one, and I mean NO ONE, outside of our world understood what we did for a living.  On more than one occasion I heard my mother proudly explaining to a friend that I was a computer programmer.

And that’s how it was, back when I first started in this field.  In the posts to come, I’m going to give more detail on some of these points as we move on to discuss how databases were built, and how searching / retrieval worked.

Please let us know if there are eDiscovery topics you’d like to see us cover in eDiscoveryDaily.

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.

 

Cheryl Garner is the Practice Support Manager at Manning & Kass, Ellrod, Ramirez, Trester LLP – a 150 attorney law firm with six offices in the U.S. Cheryl is located in the firm’s main office in Los Angeles, but has firm-wide responsibility. She joined the firm in December 2012, after a long and diverse career in the legal field.

As Practice Support Manager, Cheryl is responsible for litigation support, paralegal staff, the Docket Department, and the Workers Compensation Hearing Representatives. She spends most of her time coordinating the work of those departments, reaching out to attorneys to ensure they have the support they need, marketing the services of the departments for which she is responsible, and educating attorneys regarding best practices and making optimal use of the technology available to them.  She describes herself as a ‘Jack of all trades’ and often steps in with rolled-up sleeves to complete tasks alongside team members. She also directly handles firm-wide litigation support and eDiscovery, working closely with service providers that process data and provide hosting platforms for large cases.

Cheryl’s first legal position was with the US Attorneys office in Chicago.  She was a member of a word processing pool for the civil and criminal teams. From there she went to work for the American Bar Association as a word processing operator, and later worked in law firms as a legal secretary and word processing operator.  As technology advanced, Cheryl recognized that opportunities in word processing would diminish, and she developed a plan for her future.  While working full-time, she completed her undergraduate studies in 2000 and in 2002 she completed an ABA-approved paralegal program.  Armed with a background that included hands-on government and law firm experience, as well as paralegal and technology experience, career opportunities broadened.  Up until 2008 she worked for large law firms providing secretarial, paralegal, technology, and trial support.  In 2008 when she moved to a smaller firm, she soon recognized it was the perfect fit for her at that stage of her career. She believes that the experience she got at the smaller firms after working primarily in larger firms has been invaluable.

In 2012, Cheryl joined Manning & Kass as Practice Support Manager, a recently created position.  The position was still in its infancy when Cheryl came on board, and she saw this as a logical progression in her career.  Cheryl enjoys her work because it incorporates – and requires – the skills she has honed and the interaction she enjoys.  The firm’s structure, having paralegals report to Practice Support, increases opportunities to introduce litigation technology to the litigation teams.  It’s a model that works well for Cheryl.

When asked about her greatest professional accomplishment, Cheryl quickly answered “Getting to where I am now in my career”.  Through hard work, foresight of the use of law firm technology, and education, Cheryl planned and crafted a career that she is proud of, one that she is good at, and one that she thoroughly enjoys.

Throughout her career, Cheryl has been active in professional organizations. While still a paralegal student, Cheryl joined the Los Angeles Paralegal Association (LAPA). Later, she sat on LAPA’s Board of Directors and was Chair of the Litigation Committee.  She is still a member today.  She is also a member of NALA (National Association of Legal Assistants), and recently earned the Advanced Certified Paralegal (ACP) designation in discovery.  She is a member of ACEDS (Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists) and plans to sit for the CEDS certification exam in the near future.

Cheryl is also an instructor in the technology track of the ABA-approved paralegal program at California State University Los Angeles (CSULA).  Since 2011 she has taught the introductory course Law Office Technology, and more recently, Trial Technology.  She will teach Applied Technology in the Fall of 2014. Cheryl enjoys teaching because it offers her an opportunity to equip paralegals entering the field with the legal technology foundation they will need to succeed as legal professionals.

Cheryl is originally from Chicago, Illinois and started her professional career there.  She moved to Los Angeles 22 years ago with her son, who today also works in the legal industry.  While her work at Manning & Kass and teaching at CSULA take up most of her time, Cheryl finds time to enjoy ‘Chicago Style Stepping’, an urban dance that originated in Chicago and is similar in movements to’ West Coast Swing’ and Lindy Hop.  Cheryl travels to different cities to attend dancing events.  There’s a lot of camaraderie among attendees from different cities, but the dance has recently re-emerged in popularity as a competitive dance, providing attendees an opportunity to showcase stylings from their region of the country.  Although Cheryl hasn’t competed yet, she keeps the possibility open for the future.  Jazz and other styles of music are important to Cheryl and she often attends local jazz concerts and art events around Los Angles.  She’s currently looking forward to a cruise she’s planning with her sister, to an island ‘to be determined’.

Please let us know if there are eDiscovery topics you’d like to see us cover in eDiscoveryDaily.

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.