The current fast-paced business environment has really made the companies get into a challenging position. They cannot only just rely on its in-house staff to resolve legal disputes and conduct the required due diligence reviews of customers and suppliers. It is now likely that any company which has retained the services of a law firm will look forward to have a separate litigation support.
To define it simply, the experts have called this as the ‘process of providing consultation and support services to attorneys or others in regard to current and pending cases.’ These support services can range across various niches such as legal research, determining the extent of damages incurred in an accident or injury, the valuation of property, forensic accounting services to trace the fraud, waste, and abuse in financial activities.
But, with the world becoming more complex and information transforming to mostly digitalized form, most of these information are now in digital formats.
The uses of digital files are thus taking hold within law firms, and the litigation support is increasingly associated with e-discovery processes. Even though these support systems are about preparation and management of paper trial documents, most data that is stored in an electronic format is now subject to a discovery order under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. But frankly speaking, the use of E-Discovery is considered outside the realm of the general knowledge and teachings of law school. Photos, video, databases, and PDF files or TIFF images are considered as vital information. Voicemail has also been held subject to discovery in certain situations. In fact, E-discovery now takes place in almost every case and introducing complications and costs related to the storage and processing of sometimes very large datasets are mentioned in such cases, wheher it is needed or not needed.
In-House or Outsource?
There are often confusion, specially for the new law firms whether to conduct their litigation support activities with in-house personnel or to transfer this function to some dedicated and specialty consulting firms. Larger law firms may have the revenues and personnel to conduct many litigation support activities but there is definitely some major resources needed when it has to be done for the smaller firms. That being said, it should be understood that litigation support is not limited to new technologies. It is more than digital data storage. For instance, medical device injury cases, personal injury cases, civil litigation support, the defense of negligence claims, criminal case support, white collar crime investigation, directors and officers insurance claims, embezzlement and theft prosecution, crime and fidelity insurance claims, E-commerce crime, and art and precious metals review and analysis are also a part of the law firms who take up the support services.
Copying and file preparation
Success at a deposition, trial or during arbitration is chiefly dependent on how the discovery documents, evidentiary documents, and trial records have been presented. High-quality file reproductions must be presented within a certain period of time. Therefore, it’s important to have a trustworthy resource which can ensure the presentation of these materials meet the highest quality standards and support the given case.
Overall, the support services for any litigation are hired to employ a cost-effective support model. They have the trial assistance, training services, technology services, and document/data management services to accomplish the tasks for a given case.
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