Out-of-State Depositions
This is a great article on the procedures for setting up an out-of-state deposition. I found this article in a post at the Insurance Defense Blog.
E-Discovery? Read this first.
Are you ready to plunge into e-discovery on your next case? Can't wait to find that smoking gun? If so you should read this post today at J. Craig William's May It Please the Court. The cases he cites Zubalake v. UBS Warburg LLC and it's predecessors Zubalake I, II etc., and Claudia Quinby v. WestLB AG, No. 04 Civ. 7406, S.D. N.Y. , are both a good introduction to e-discovery and also cautionary tales. If you do not read them someday you may end up paying the other side $30,000 in costs.
CaseMap: Coolest Thing Since Sliced Bread
Over the past few years I have become quite fond of the CaseSoft product CaseMap which is now up to version 6. It is a software program which allows you to manage an individual case in a way that will put all the information in the file at your fingertips so that it can be retrieved and organized with ease.
If you are like me, your individual case files take on a life of their own and grow exponentially. Many hours are often wasted hunting for that one document, that one phrase in a document, that excerpt from a deposition and so on. How many of you have picked up a copy of a deposition bristling with post it notes and were not sure what the post it notes were marking in the first place.
CaseMap 6 takes care of these problems. The software is essentially a series of spreadsheets that can be manipulated. There is a spreadsheet to keep track of the facts in the case, one to keep track of the characters in the case be they individuals or organizations, one to keep track of documents in the case, one to keep track of issues in the case, one to keep track of questions as they pop up and one to keep track of research. The fact spreadsheet allows you to keep track of the source of the fact, be it from a witness or a document. You can link to the exact deposition testimony that supports the fact with the addition of TextMap 2, also a product of CaseSoft. CaseMap 6 also links with Acrobat PDFs so that you can link directly to a certain document or page in a document. The spreadsheet of documents allows you to link directly to the documents both in PDF and your word processor documents. Both the fact and document spreadsheets link to the issue spreadsheet so that you can see which fact or document supports which issue. All of the spreadsheets allow you to add many other categories and customize your own categories.
The software can also sort and filter the information and print reports. You can sort out all of the facts attributable to one person or sort out the disputed and undisputed facts. CaseMap 6 also features a summary judgment function which sorts out the undisputed facts and ties them in to the various issues in the case. You can sort out the facts that are the most favorable to your case and those that are most favorable to the other side.
CaseMap 6 also has an Adobe plug in which allows you to bate stamp all of your PDF documents. Your staff will appreciate this to no end. Before, when you were done bate stamping and discovered that you didn't include a document which should go somewhere in the middle of the stack, you probably did something like stamp the document 100299 and then wrote in an "A" at the end of the number. With CaseMap you can simply renumber the whole stack in seconds.
I am only touching the surface of the product in this post as to comment on all of the features would take up entirely too much space on a blog. A couple of examples of the efficiencies this program provides may give you a good idea of what it can do. Imagine you are getting ready for trial and you want to gather all of your sources for your cross examination. CaseMap allows you to print them all out grouped for each individual witness. Compare that to making copies of deposition pages and documents that have been dug out of the file. Imagine a question arises as to whether or not certain evidence is admissible. The question can be assigned, for instance, to an associate who then does the research and enters it into CaseMap. Later you can come back and link between that certain piece of evidence and the research that allows its' admissibility.
I realize that this may be old news to many out there in the blawgosphere, but to any who have not checked it out it is certainly worth a look see. I also understand that CaseSoft was recently purchased by Lexis.
Being a legal intern adds value to your education.
While I was reading David Swanner’s post the other day dated September 12th, “What they should teach in law school”, it struck me that I should make Washington law students aware of the great opportunity they have available to them under “Rule 9”. David Swanner’s post suggests having a course where the students take a case from the initial decision whether or not to take the case and on through the various stages of trial preparation and eventually the trial. Washington’s Admission to Practice Rule 9, which is also known as the legal intern rule, has the potential to provide this type of learning. Let me explain by giving you my own experience.
When I reached my second year of law school I was bored stiff. I had learned a lot of rules, cases and theories that did not seem to apply to anything in real life. It all seemed so arbitrary. I remember watching the ships in Puget Sound and wondering if I should quit law school and join the Coast Guard. But, everything changed when I took a job during the summer between my second and third year as a Rule 9 intern with a small three man firm in Seattle. I continued working there through my third year.
The guys at this firm were great. I was allowed to try two bench trials both of which were fender benders but I treated that them like capital offense cases. I dealt directly with the clients, found witnesses, interviewed witnesses, negotiated with the other side, made sure my witness were subpoenaed for trial and tried the cases. They also allowed me to argue motions on other cases, draft interrogatories and of course do research. I had to find my way around in not one but three different county court houses. Suddenly the law was not that boring anymore. The law had a direct bearing on my client’s problems. I also saw the limits of the law in terms of financial risk and affordability. If they had charged my time at the full rate on the trials it would not have been worth it to the client to proceed and on a contingency fee there would not have been enough there for the attorney. My supervising attorneys were quick to point that out to me and let me know that they were only doing the cases so I could have the experience.
By the time I passed the bar and took on a full time practice I felt like I was many steps ahead of my classmates. So I would urge students at the end of their second year to look for these opportunities. For what I wanted to do, which was to work in a small firm in a smaller town the experience in this particular firm was invaluable. If you want to work for a downtown megafirm I’m not sure what to tell you.
Avoid Adjectives
When cross examining witnesses avoid adjectives. The use of an adjective just invites an argument. For example:
Q: You were driving extremely fast?
A: No, I wasn't driving "extremely" fast.
Q: You were driving 30 miles per hour over the speed limit. Wouldn't you say that that was extremely fast?
A: No, there was no other traffic and the road was wide and straight. So while I was going 30 miles per hour over the speed limit, I was not driving "extremely" fast for the conditions.
The better questions would be as follows:
Q: You were going 65 miles per hour?
A: Yes.
Q: The speed limit was 35 miles per hour?
A: Yes.
The members of the jury will fill in "extremely fast" on their own. While the witness may still try to slip in his excuse in response to the better questions, it is much less likely to happen.
