Litigation Support - what do the Terms mean?

The mere existence of a guide to technical terms might put people off litigation support. If you are one who says "I just want to do a list of documents" skip to the end of this page.

Technical Terms

Database
Image
Optical Character Recognition
Full Text Retrieval

 

Litigation Support Concepts

Coding
Data Exchange and Conversion
Portability
Scanning and Coding Bureaux

 

Litigation Support Systems

Technical Terms

It is easy for those who work in litigation support to assume that anyone interested in litigation support understands the terminology. This is no more true than the lawyers' assumption that their clients know what they are talking about. Here are some of the basic terms.

Database
Generically, any collection of information, usually, but not exclusively in electronic form.

Specifically, and more usually in this context, an electronic collection of information, or data, stored in a structured form. It is most easily pictured as a grid in which the horizontal rows represent one record i.e. all the information about one discrete item and where each vertical column hold all the information of a like kind - a column for senders of correspondence, a column for dates and so on.

The smallest unit of information in a database is a field - the intersection between a row and column. Fields have specific data type such as character or numeric. Fields of the memo type can take large amounts of free text - see below.

A database application is a set of software instructions designed to permit a user to add, edit and retrieve data from a database or to give instructions for some other use or manipulation of the data.

It is the structure of rows and columns which chiefly differentiates a database application from a word-processor. The latter cannot easily reorder data or select a sub-set from the data for processing.

Image
An electronic picture of a document stored in a computer. It is usually stored there by being scanned ie copied by a device akin in function to a photocopier.

As with a photocopy, a stored image is merely an arrangement of black, white and grey dots matching the original as nearly as possible. It cannot be searched directly by a computer.

An image can be printed, and database software can be instructed to print a selection of images in a particular order and with a sequential number - eg a trial bundle.

Optical Character Recognition or OCR
A software process which extracts the text from an image or PDF and makes it available for searching. OCR is not guaranteed to be 100% accurate - the degree of accuracy depends on the quality both of the image and of the OCR software. Many cases, however, warrant the expense of proof-reading and correcting the OCR text to gain the ability to find documents by reference to their contents, as well as by using any coding.

Full Text Retrieval
Searching across large amounts of text which has been pre-indexed. The text might be contained in a Memo field within a database or might be in documents held externally. Examples include free-text notes made about a document or the text of the documents extracted by Optical Character Recognition.

Full Text search tools can include linking terms called Boolean operators. These include AND, OR, NOT, CONTAINS, BETWEEN, NEAR. The more sophisticated tools can do fuzzy searches (where a word-match does not have to be exact), context searches (where the surrounding text is aanlaysed to determine relevance), and other tools only relevant in extreme cases.

Litigation Support Concepts

These are not exactly technical terms, but are other expressions which are used by those engaged in litigation support.

Coding
This sounds technical, but means no more than information added to the record to make it more useful and easier to find - in this sense, the date and the name of the sender are codes. You can add information about the source or present location of each document and an indication as to the issues to which it relates. Coding may be structured (eg a Yes/No option as to an issue or the selection of one of a finite number of choices), or unstructured (eg a narrative comment about a document). It may be objective (eg the name of the sender or the date) or subjective (eg as to its degree of relevance).

Data Exchange and Conversion
This refers to the ability to share information with others, whether or not they use the same database system. This may involve some degree of programmatic conversion. This is usually both faster and cheaper than retyping the information. The relevance to litigation is two-fold: clients often have information in their own document management systems which can be re-used; and the courts are increasingly ordering that list of documents data be exchanged where there is a saving of costs to be achieved by it. Clients appreciate it for the same reason.

Portability
This is not a technical term but an obvious desirable in any LSS. Laptops are now available with a capacity which until recently was only found in network servers. It is quite possible to carry a large database (or several smaller ones) to a client's office or to court complete with the images of every document. A truly portable system can also be copied to others in parallel with the solicitor's own use - to barristers, clients or experts.

Scanning and Coding Bureaux
The whole task of turning paper into scanned images can be outsourced in the same way as photocopying is. There are a number of bureaux who specialise in this aspect of litigation support. Their role can be extended to cover the objective coding where the balance of time, cost and the availability of internal resources warrants it.

Litigation Support Systems

Disclosure Systems
Disclosure Systems like our Openlaw Litigation Software are primarily designed to handle the creation of lists of the documents disclosed in litigation, the pre-trial analysis and the preparation and use of trial Bundles.

Case Management Systems
Case Management Systems automate some of the repetitive functions of litigation and help with setting and meeting deadlines, producing standard documents and reporting on the status of a caseload. A brief overview for those new to the subject.

"I just want to do a List of Documents"
Few cases warrant the use of the grander tools described above. What most people want is a better way of doing what they have to do for every case - a simple list with a description, a sender, a recipient and a date, with a sequential number down the left margin.

The same amount of typing used in a WP list, when applied to a simple database, adds value immediately, in that you can sort and search a database in a manner impossible in a word processor. If the case settles after Disclosure you are, at worst, level-pegging with those who use WP for their lists.

The real value of holding the data in a database comes with those cases where it was not possible to predict at the outset whether it would run beyond disclosure. Then it may appear, in retrospect, that one or more of the ideas defined above can be used to add value to your existing data.

You can add more coding to your database and send the paper out to a scanning bureau to have them turned into images. In a case where the forensic analysis of detail is critical, you might have the images OCR'd and then indexed by a full-text retrieval engine. You can exchange data with your opponents and make use of the portability of a laptop to take the whole Case to the client or to court.

But if you never need more than the list of documents, you are still winning.

Chris Dale

Chris has been working on litigation support software for over 10 years. The software is marketed under the name Openlaw.

Openlaw is low cost litigation support software, priced by the matter, designed to help litigators meet their post-Woolf obligations in the most cost-effective manner.