Call-Out Boxes

One type of graphic is never objected to. The Call Out. It is so powerful that this may be the only graphic you will ever need. If you have a transcript, an email, a document with a key statement which illustrates the point of your litigation you need to highlight those words for the court. Most of the time, these “smoking-gun statements” are mixed up into a large paragraph or document and are easily lost. You need to make this statement pop and stand out as critical evidence that the court must pay attention to. The trick is to take a JPG snapshot of the original document and to reduce the size to a background picture. Then, use a callout box:

Creating a Call-Out Box

In the above example, I took a snapshot of an email and created a call-out overlay and then rendered this as a picture to insert into my presentation software. Here is how I did it.

1. The first step is to get the original document containing the quote, figure or data that you want to Call-Out. Bring it up on your pc and do a Print-Screen of that document. Usually this means just hitting the print screen button which is commonly on the home key, or on some laptops it may be a combination of Function + Print Screen. This tells your computer to make a copy of everything on your computer screen.

2. Now we want to crop out only the document. When you do a print screen it takes everything, including the start button, other programs, and other things you don’t want to show in your graphic. My favorite and free software is Paint. Go into Microsoft Paint (Start–Programs–Accessories–Paint) and then Paste your screen print there. Toggle off the selection tool and then back on it (earlier versions of Paint (with Windows XP) don’t allow you to use the selection tool unless you click another tool first and then back on it, although it works fine in Windows 7). Drag the selection around the area that you want to capture as your background document. Choose copy (Control+C).

3. I use Microsoft Publisher to create the call-outs although other programs including MS Word, and Powerpoint can also do the trick. I create a new document and then Paste (Control + V). I size the document to the appropriate background size.

4. Now I create the call-out. Publisher has the callouts in the Shapes toolbar. In Publisher 2010, this is on the Home Tab. In earlier versions you will need to reveal the Shapes Toolbar. Click on the call-out shape you want. There are three. One is a boxy looking call out, the second is a Circular call out, and the third is a callout box with rounded edges.

5. Publisher has the ability to color in the background of the callout box. For this example, I chose Red. Depending on your background picture you may want to use Blue or Yellow. Then, I type the exact quote I want to illustrate and size the call out box and text so that it can cover just enough of the original document so that you can see that it is coming from that document.

6. If you created the call out box first and pasted the cropped document image second, the document will now be in front of the call out box. You need to right click on it and send it to the back. this makes the call out box appear in front of your picture. Publisher has this ability to create Layers. This is a critical need when creating graphics in litigation.

Now you have your graphic. You can use the print screen + Paint & Crop technique to turn the above photoshop document into a graphic that you can use in any Trial presentation program.

Timelines

The second most used and most effective graphic is the timeline. This will show when important case related factual events take place. This is most effective when you can show how the progression of events illustrate a consistent attempt to defraud your client, lie, cheat or steal. A timeline shows a pattern of behavior that you may not be able to prove easily if you just throw up a bunch of individual and unconnected events. The timeline proves that there is an orchestrated methodology or actions are premeditated.

Timelines can be created with specialized legal software, or simply with a copy of Excel, or Publisher. Some dedicated timeline software makes timelines quickly and easily, whereas Excel and Publisher require a manual process. No matter what tool you use, getting timelines into your trial graphics presentation are critical to success.

Animations

Animations aren’t used extensively, however they can have a great deal of impact. I put animations 3rd on the list, simply because I feel that if you animate timelines or call-outs you can really add interest and impact to what you are saying.

For example, complex timelines often show several dates. You could animate the timeline and show First he did this, and then this, and then this and this. But rather than overwhelm them with all of the facts in one big timeline, you can animate it. Show the first one, let that sink in, and then let the next ones appear one after the other.

Adding MultiMedia (Video/Audio clips)

Multimedia is a critical component to modern courtroom presentations. With the prevalence of audio clips from recorded phone messages, to video captured from security cameras, you often need to integrate this into your trial. Often this means getting video and audio editing software or hiring a quality company that can do these edits for you. Multimedia clips often need some cleanup. Fuzzy phone messages could be enhanced to reduce feedback or background noise. Video should be enhanced and synched with a text-based transcript of the video. Don’t assume that people can understand the video/audio statements. If you can tell them what they say, show them what they say and offer a handout you can cover all the basis for every type of listener.

Write-Blocking File Copy UtilitiesOne of the biggest jobs of a Data-Forensic team charged with handling Electronic Discovery requests is the requirement to protect and preserve critical data in a forensically sound container.  You want to capture all of the potential metadata for future review and extraction into litigation review platforms. 

Write-blocking software such as Encase, X-Ways or AccessData’s suite of tools, allow the forensic examiner the ability to protect the data on the original equipment (PC, Server, or Laptop).  If you simply hook up a usb drive to a pc or server and did a file copy you could be spoiling the data on both machines.  At the very least, you are not capturing all of the potential metadata such as creation date, accessed date, original machine location (path and servername) without using the proper forensic tools.  This may become a problem if you are trying to do advanced searches or if you are trying to link a specific person to a file that may have existed on their specific directory or workstation.

Encase, for example, extracts files and puts them into a unique forensically sound container called an E01 file.  This file format allows you to peek into the container using the forensic tool viewers, but it doesn’t allow you to harm, or change the integrity of the file or the metadata of the file.  You can use advanced forensic search tools to search the E01 container, or you could extract the files out to another drive for file-level review.  However the original files remain untouched and in a pristine state. 

Password Crackers

Without the passwords to a network or to a workstation it is difficult to access the data you need to copy.  Forensic experts generally have a whole army of password crackers available to them in order to recover lost, forgotten or hard to obtain passwords that may unlock hidden gems of information within databases, network partitions, or equipment by key personnel.   

Search Utilities

Several utilities exist that allow forensic experts to search forensically captured data.  However, the more advanced tools may require some programming knowledge in order to refine the searches.  These tools aren’t always instantaneous.  Since most of the files aren’t indexed, the search algorithm must essentially hit every single file, header, and metadata field separately before moving onto the next file. 

However, it is often useful to employ search utilities on the E01 file container so that you can reduce the overall population of documents based on agreed upon keyword phrases.  This can save review time and massive production costs.

Processing Software

Once you identify what documents will need to be reviewed by paralegals or attorneys, you need to process the files and turn them into a loadable format for your litigation support software.  Summation, for example, needs a DII load file created along with some supporting files which may contain metadata fields to populate into the database.

Not all processing software is created equal.  Some processing software is faster than others and can push through errors.  Some software may not be E01 file aware and may not be able to extract critical metadata that could be essential to your case arguments.

Accounting Experts

Accounting has its own kind of magic. From a common person’s view, numbers, figures or financial data may make no sense at all. However forensic accountants can use financial data to uncover hidden truths about the plots and inner workings of corporate management. They have the ability to look at a balance sheet and tax statements and tell if management was attempting to hide assets, defraud investors, or even use financial analysis to uncover keys to stress due to financial or liquidity issues.

Forensic Experts

When you have servers and pc’s containing valuable data that can be used for or against your client, bringing in forensic experts is a must. First they must capture the data by taking forensic copies of the equipment hard disks. Next, they should be able to export this into a format that is readable for your attorneys. If necessary, you can then have them process the information for your review platform. When you have reviewed the documents you then need to have them export out the documents you have identified as producable. Sometimes in court you need to bring in a forensic expert to link specific documents to key personnel, in order to prove that they were the author of or had knowledge of key pieces of information that are important to your case.

Security Specialists

In this internet age, security specialists are more important than ever. Perhaps you need a security specialist to prove that an irate employee planted a virus, or stole funds from the company. Perhaps you can tie an attacker to a firewall breakin or a denial of service attack. Especially in companies where billions of dollars hang in the balance, security specialists can give you an edge when identifying and preserving evidence.

Investigators

Sometimes you need to identify what assets a person has. Where is the money, vehicles, houses and other assets that may be kept off the books. Especially in Ponzi-schemes, defrauders may try to wire money outside the country to international accounts that are difficult to track and access for federal agents. It is your job to protect your clients and give them the best opportunity to recover as much as they can. Private investigators and sometimes ex-CIA operatives generally have the skills to help you uncover critical facts that can make a case stick.

Scientists

Not all cases involve merely accounting or technical data. Sometimes deep science such as biology, medical, environmental or other sciences are needed in order to make a case. It is critical to identify specific experts that have the expertise to present on the specific facts involved in the case.

Courtroom Experts

Although a good technician can help you understand important pieces of information about a case and make sense out of technical data, this may not translate into being a good Courtroom Expert. Courtroom experts understand their role within litigation. They can respond to tricky questions by counsel and handle themselves honorably on the stand. They have an air of professionalism that must surpass mere technical prowess, and they must be able to clearly and effectively communicate the how’s and why’s in court.

Courtroom Experts need to be able to speak slowly and use common language and simple terminology that the judge and jury can understand, almost as if he were a seasoned professor speaking to a class of freshmen. The courtroom expert should be able to make comparisons and analogies to real life examples so that the critical points stand out and are easily understood. Most importantly their credability must remain intact throughout the trial and their expert status must remain intact under fire.

It may happen that the Courtroom Expert is the same person that handles the technical work for you while preparing for trial. However, more often than not, you will need to seek a professional courtroom expert who is different from the person handling your day to day work.

Hosted E-Discovery or Litigation Review platforms can be accessed with a browser from anywhere.  Often large multi-district litigation cases involve many attorneys from different parts of the country, and often involving experts and co-counsel from other firms.  A traditional in-house system isn’t made to accommodate remote access users.  Cases often grow quickly and it would require the ability to add licenses instantaneously to meet urgent case demands.  Hosted systems have immediate growth capabilities.  With a phone call or email, you can get new users added and set up instantly. 

Bandwidth is a key feature of hosted systems.  Often this is overlooked when trying to accommodate remote users from an in-house system.  Hosted E-Discovery takes up serious bandwidth.  PDF’s, and Tiff images take large amounts of bandidth when downloading through a browser.  Hosted systems account for bandwidth strain and often have 100 mb or better internet connections so that they have plenty of bandwidth to accommodate hundreds of simultaneous users. 

Disk Capacity

Most big cases involve many gigabytes or terrabytes of data.  Hosting this in-house can put a huge strain on a firm’s available hard disk capacity.  Often large cases mean buying a new server and backup solution.  This can be expensive and time consuming.  Hosted platforms are built from the ground up to be able to support several terrabytes of information at any given time.  The quantities of scale allow them to invest in powerful storage solutions and exotic backup solutions that would be cost prohibitive to a typical firm.  By hosting your E-Discovery data, a firm doesn’t have to tax its internal systems and resources. 

Professional Services

Hosted systems generally have a team of engineers and litigation support professionals on call to service their clients 24/7.  In-house systems often have limited support capacity since firms generally don’t hire additional staff to support those systems.  When firms have a large case going to trial, they need to make sure there is uninterrupted access to critical hosted data.  One hour of downtime could shut down a team of 40 coders, causing serious delays, cost overruns and lost fees. 

Experienced professionals dedicated to a hosted platform are able to deal with remote printing issues, database issues, and proper loading of data.  Most hosted cases involve 100,000 documents or more.  A mistake loading the data can cause database corruption and lost time at minimum or serious mistakes and oversights in the worst senarios.  This is one of the biggest reasons firms of any size turn to hosted solutions.  Hosting companies have the resources to hire and train the best support staff who are dedicated to these systems. 

Security

With the prevalence of hacking attacks, denial of service attacks and other threats, securing your online E-Discovery systems is critical.  However just as critical is maintaining protection of internal systems from non-firm employees such as experts and co-counsel from other firms.  Hosted platforms are outside of any specific firm’s network, thus protecting the boundary of client privilege documents in other cases.  Also, some hosting companies have better security systems than are available to most firms. 

Advanced Searching Features

Another key feature for Hosted platforms is the ability to utilize advanced searching and more powerful databases than are available to firms.  Instant Keyword searching across terrabytes of data and metadata are possible with powerful hosted platforms.  But many hosted platforms have the ability to look for identical documents, similar documents and do searches which can allow you to mass-code documents as responsive, unresponsive, and privileged in minutes rather than months.  This can allow a small team of coders to do the job of hundreds of coders in a fraction of the time. 

Other Considerations

 Hosted platforms have other benefits that aren’t always obvious.  Cost accounting, for example, is a feature not often talked about in E-Discovery forums.  No firm wants to foot the bill for other firms involved in a particular litigation.  By using a hosted platform, the costs are easily identified and can be used in court and shared amongst local counsel.  If you need to fight for expenses, a hosted platform’s expenses are easy to prove.  If issues with the system become evident during the case, the hosted system can be the one to blame rather than the firm’s internal staff.  During the heat of a trial, friction can form with staff and E-Discovery professional services.  By chosing a hosted platform, it creates distance that can protect internal staffers and IT pros from the rath of sleep deprived attorneys.

Step 1: Locating & Securing Electronic DiscoveryThe first step in the extensive process of the electronic discovery process is to identify the kinds of responsive data that you need to request from the opposing party.  Courts do not smile kindly on blind digging missions where you can’t show a reasonable amount of proof that specific critical data exists related to the case.  So, it is important to target your discovery request with specific types of data in mind.  Yet, you must be broad enough to include all types of media including paper files, and you don’t want to limit your request too much, thus hampering your ability to get documentation that would be supportive of your position. It is often recommended to get a forensics expert with extensive computer background, and sometimes an accounting forensics expert is also necessary in order to crunch numbers from financial databases.  Getting an expert’s assistance early on can help develop a well thought out and comprehensive discovery request.  During this stage it is required by the court to do a Meet and Confer with opposing counsel in order to define the requests for production.  During the meet and confers it is helpful to have your forensic technicians speak to the opposing tech staff in order to identify what types of systems, backup solutions, pc’s, databases, and more may exist which may or may not contain the data you are targeting.  For large companies, you may speak to multiple technicians who each have a specialty and concentration. It is also important to decide on how you would like the data extracted from the opposition’s systems.  Do you want it in forensic evidence containers, in native format, tif images, etc…?  You must be specific.  Also beware of the costs and time requirements involved in electronic discovery.

It is also important to understand the legal production requirements for your own clients.  If there is a reasonable understanding that litigation may ensue, you need to advise your client to protect accidental spoilation of data by putting in legal hold systems, taking forensic snapshots of critical systems, and making sure that auto purge solutions are not enabled. 

Step 2: Acquisition of Electronic Discovery

Forensic experts are often called in to take images (point in time snapshots) of critical data stored on pc’s, servers, laptops, cell phones, databases and other types of media.  Sometimes data is stored in file cabinets which need to be scanned, OCR’ed and turned into loadable files for your litigation support database system.  Working with your electronic discovery vendor and forensic team you should make a detailed plan for acquiring data in an orderly fashion.  What are the deadlines involved?  Who is in charge of the data when it comes in?  What database should be used for holding, coding and producing the database?  Should you use an online hosted data repository?  All these questions and more should be handled in this stage. 

It is important to discuss with your client and the opposing party to get an understanding of the types of data files and amount of files to be produced so you have a good understanding of what challenges you will have. 

A detailed plan for handling privileged review, and identifying privileged documents should be developed.  Often when dealing with electronic discovery, there may be inadvertent produced documents.  It is important to understand the idea of claw back, and that you sometimes must be able to purge specific documents identified as privileged after they have been produced.  These documents cannot make their way into the courtroom. 

Step 3: Searching and Coding

Many new tools exist on the market that allow you to take large groups of documents that look similar and code them en masse.  This can save countless hours of attorney and paralegal time, and allow staff to focus on more critical issues.  It is important to define specific search terms in order to cut down responsive documents to a manageable amount for attorneys to review. 

This stage can be the most grueling part of electronic discovery.  Depending on the amount of responsive documents, you may need to assign teams of coders to code the database in shifts.  This process of coding identifies potential exhibits to be used in court or referenced in pleadings.  Some documents or data must be combined and analyzed by experts for validity to see if it can be admitted as evidence.  Here is where the digital fingerprint is established and an electronic picture can be drawn and prepared for use in the litigation. 

Step 4: Production and Courtroom Presentation

This final stage is where documents and data are extracted from the above coding systems and exhibits are prepared to be viewed in court.  There are several types of devices that can be used in court.  Powerpoint presentations can be enabled with video clips, audio files, and snapshots of actual documents found.  Digital timelines based on the data found can establish important evidentiary proofs. 

By this point in the process, all of the heavy lifting has already been done.  It is really important to just take the remaining exhibits and organize them in an orderly fashion to be presented in the most effective manner possible.  You can use bar code readers to pull up documents on the screen, or a digital elmo to project the documents onto a screen.  You must be prepared to have all of the exhibits and data available in court.  Even though many online data repositories will be used during the Search and Coding stage, not every courtroom is equipped with internet connectivity.  It is better to have that data on hand at a moment’s notice. 

Specific forensic issues may become evident at this stage.  Finding proofs that counter the opposing party’s digital evidence presented, becomes paramount. ]]> http://ediscoveryuniverse.com/blog/2010/12/e-discovery-overview-understanding-the-basics-of-e-discovery/feed/ 0 http://ediscoveryuniverse.com/blog/2010/12/early-case-assessment-overview/ http://ediscoveryuniverse.com/blog/2010/12/early-case-assessment-overview/#comments Sun, 19 Dec 2010 11:11:10 +0000 Chris Cardillo http://ediscoveryuniverse.com/blog/?p=29

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In July AccessData Group officially merged with CT Summation.  AccessData which has been around since 1987 has over 350 employees and is headquartered in Lindon, Utah.  It is most often known for its Firewall Ediscovery Solutions and Forensic Toolkit.

So, the way they explained it is that they felt that Summation fit the plan so that customers wouldn’t have to deal with multiple load files, and import export processes. 

In the short term, they will continue to support Summation products such as Discovery Cracker, Iblaze, Enterprise and Case Vantage.  However they have aggressive development plans to integrate Summation with the FTK line of products and to utilize a more robust Database on the backend.  Their target date for the newly integrated product is the middle part of 2011.

In addition to enhanced integration features, they plan to have support for E01 forensic files from within the Summation viewer.  AccessData will continue to support the existing certified Summation professionals, but will be launching a new training platform for Lit Support, core Forensics and Mobile Forensics.