Lawyers do the most amazing things...

Lawyers--at least ones without a computer background--never cease to amaze me. Perhaps what amuses me most is the types of thing that fascinate them. For instance, our firm was preparing for a major trial seeking the recovery of attorneys' fees. The senior litigator was trying to find a way to present volumes of attorney billing information to the Court while everyone else in the office was going through old time sheets, breaking them down and analyzing them so that the information could be used for presentation. Of course, most people working on these reports were using notepads and calculators; this was, at best, a tedious process. When I was called upon to assist, I sat down with my notebook computer and spreadsheet. Little did I realize that this was a mistake.

The mistake, of course, was demonstrating just some of what the computer can do. While a nicely formatted spreadsheet may seem even trivial, to the lawyers who are only just beginning to move into the twentieth century, something like a spreadsheet might as well be magic. By the end of the day, my notebook computer was crunching numbers relating to attorneys fees for the entire firm for the last four years, and generating the tables and summary of information needed for the hearing.

So when it came time to finalize a memorandum of law regarding our case, it was little surprise who got stuck with the job. Still, it was almost worth it to see the look on the partner's face when he saw the pages roll off the printer with the spreadsheet tables appearing in the middle of the memo. From the look on the senior litigator's face, it was as if I'd performed some sort of magic trick.

The Rule of Thumb for Litigation: K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid)

I attended a demonstration of a system which allows an attorney to index all of his trial exhibits on a computer with bar codes, and then to recall them simply by waving a bar code reader over a corresponding bar code on his notes. During the presentation, I was almost sold on the idea that this would be a great tool for a litigator. In reality, I don't think that most litigators are quite ready for toys like that, and the technology itself runs contrary to the job of a good litigator. The reason litigators are not ready for this system is simple: it's just not simple enough. Let's face it, most litigators don't possess the technical background needed to work with this technology, and the last thing they want to be doing on the eve of trial is to make sure that all of the bar codes are in the right place. I'm not saying that this technology doesn't have its place; rather, I'm suggesting that only a minority of cases will justify its use.

Still, there is a factor which every good trial attorney understands which tends to run contrary to this technology. Good trial lawyers realize that in order to keep a judge's attention and persuade a jury, they must "keep it simple, stupid." The product of this realization is the art of boiling down a case with a million witnesses and exhibits to perhaps two or three that will prevail. As a seasoned trial lawyer once said, being a good litigator is the art of reducing even the most complex of cases to a few simple points that can be repeated over and over again until the jury has no choice but to agree. In short, they must follow the K.I.S.S. rule.

With this in mind, it is easy to see why the bar code technology and litigation don't go hand in hand. The technology designers--who see that this technology can be used to organize large numbers of exhibits--are not litigators, as such they fail to grasp that simplicity is what lies at the heart of good litigation. Since Litigation is not about organizing and displaying as many exhibits as possible, at least for now the technology seems to be misplaced.

Got A Story? Share It!

If you hear information about firms moving towards technology, or a new way to become more productive through the use of technology (old or new), or any other war stories, please let me know. Send your story to <Edge@CompLaw.com>. Who knows, the story might be reproduced here.

Samuel Lewis is an attorney practicing Computer/Internet Law and Intellectual Property Law with the firm of Romanik, Lavin, Huss & Paoli in Hollywood, Florida, a member of the Florida Bar's Computer Law Committee, and the creator of COMPLAW^SM (http://www.CompLaw.com). He can be reached at 954-922-4656 or via e-mail: <slewis@CompLaw.com>.

Copyright © 1997, Samuel Lewis. All Rights Reserved.

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