Computerized Litigation Document Management: What Does it Do?

First, let’s clarify a few concepts:

• Document Management means managing documents that arise in the course of a business or profession. The objective is to retain all documents that are likely to be needed later, secure them from different kinds of risks and retrieve them efficiently when needed. Document management also involves the disposal of documents that are not needed, saving storage space.


• Computerized Document Management means using computers to better achieve document management objectives. Computers use far less space to store documents, offer greater protection from different kinds of risks, and provide retrieval in seconds opposed to the hours needed under a manually-operated system. Documents can also be tagged with expiration dates so that reminders will be generated for their disposal.


• Litigation Document Management facilitates the storage, retrieval, and presentation of documents needed to argue one’s case in a court of law.


• Computerized Litigation Document Management involves putting the documents, classified by case, in the computer so that these can be carried to a court of law and used efficiently during the proceedings.

With these ideas clarified, let’s now look at what computerized litigation document management can achieve.

Higher Litigation Success

You can store everything related to a case in your laptop computer - evidence, precedents, depositions, and all other relevant materials. In fact, you can capture much of these directly into the computer and store them under the relevant case.

You can then carry the entire document archive with you everywhere, to the courts of law, meetings, and so on. Retrieving documents is a matter of entering search criteria and receiving matching results-all in a matter of seconds.

Compare this scenario to a paper-based one. You have to carry a bundle of paper everywhere and the bundle can be quite bulky in the case of complex cases. Retrieval of a particular document is an error-prone and time-consuming routine. There is also the chance that some key document can get lost during one of the frequent handling.

Chances are that the laptop-carrying attorney will be able to make a more impressive and convincing case, and win the day. (Unless an old-fashioned judge or jury views the new-fangled devices unfavorably!)

Greater Volume of Cases Handled

With the convenience and speed of computerized litigation document management, you can accomplish more in the same amount of time. Instead of spending most of this time managing documents, you can spend it on more remunerative work. A computerized litigation document management system automates much of these document management routines.

The result can lead to a larger practice.

Computerized Litigation Document Management Issues

To be really effective, you need to manage relevant issues and plan your document management system in a way that meets your needs. Otherwise, it can turn out to be a greater drag on your time with a constant stream of complaints and problems.

The issues can be broadly listed as:

• Which documents are to go into the system? You might not want to transfer the few documents related to a small case to the computer.


• How will the documents be transferred to the system? Some might be captured directly as when a deposition is recorded directly into a sound file. Others might be created by data entry either at the time of occurrence of a transaction or subsequently through transcription from a paper document. Yet others might be scanned images of paper documents, possibly converted into a computer readable format using OCR (optical character recognition) technology.


• How will the document database be structured? You can create full-text or summary databases. Full-text databases contain the complete document while summary databases contain only an extract. Full-text databases will enable you to transport full documentation for each case, which can be advantageous when you have to produce them at varied locations.


• How easy should the system be? You should be able to do all that you want to do in an intuitive and quick manner. Otherwise, the system might not be used as you are too busy to learn complicated maneuvers to work with the system.