Providing Internet access to evidentiary documents, electronic discovery and transcripts is no longer a value-add for litigation teams — it’s an expectation.  Road warriors need anytime/anywhere access to litigation databases as they dart from deposition to deposition, and online repositories provide this capability virtually in real time. 

Old options for remotely accessing case information are evolving, and new options are emerging.  And in one case, a “best of both worlds” has materialized, providing both online and offline data access.  Here’s an overview of current models.

On Your Server

A new wrinkle in the array of Web-hosted data options is for a firm to host data on its own Web servers and provide Web access to remote users in the firm and counsel/expert witnesses outside the firm through a browser.  Evidentiary data is housed locally and administrated by the firm’s IT staff.  (A similar functionality can be achieved using Citrix; locally hosted Web repositories are generally more economical.)

There are several reasons why firms might opt to host case information locally:

You can maintain control of sensitive information:  With data residing on servers within the firm, it’s easy to control access to information — and the perception of security is strong.  The more confidential the information like trade secrets and matters, the more important the perception of control that local hosting affords.

There’s no need to “reinvent the wheel” to include users outside the firm:  Say you have all of your case information loaded and coded in your local Windows-based litigation support program and want to give an expert witness or outside counsel access to a very finite set of data.  Using a local Web-based application is a turnkey and relatively inexpensive proposition, as there’s no need to reload data or purchase outside users a license for only limited data usage.  The Web-based system can be implemented as an add-on and work in tandem with existing Windows-based applications.

You can control costs for remote users within the firm:  The “control costs for limited usage” model extends to satellite users within the firm itself.  If the lion’s share of the work on a given matter is going to be conducted by a firm’s San Francisco office, but the Chicago and New York offices will need periodic access to case data, it might make sense to install a Windows-based program in the San Francisco office and set up the primary case database there.  Stakeholders from the other offices could tap into the repository using the firm’s browser-based system.

You may not need the deep functionality of a Windows-based system:  Inexperienced and occasional users may find the limited functionality of a Web-based system preferable to the Windows-based systems, whose pyrotechnics will not be missed.

On Their Server

A few years back some industry pundits were ready to ring the death knell of ASPs.  As anyone who’s been involved in a major litigation lately can tell you, the news of their demise was greatly exaggerated.

By now, everyone probably understands how an externally hosted case repository works.  Under the ASP model, users lease the hosting service and resident search and retrieval software on a “pay-per-use” basis.  Litigation team members can use the online repository to search and annotate evidentiary documents.  Other participants on the case can be given access to the work product created by their associates/co-counsel, through a sophisticated permissions structure.

The functionality of litigation support ASPs has come a long way over the last few years.  With leading solutions, all case elements can be searched simultaneously, so evidentiary combinations can be readily identified, with search results outlined by source.  More advanced search queries are supported, and search results can be formatted and printed.

The best ASPs provide robust security, both internally and externally.  External security measures include employing software and hardware tools to keep the evidence protected from tampering and hackers.  Internal security measures include a design that limits access to a reviewer’s subjective comments.  For example, if one reviewer wishes to exclude other reviewers from accessing her notes on a given document or transcript, she can do so.

Here are some situations when firms will seek an ASP to host cases:

• Ultra-large cases:  It gets to be too much for most firms to administrate a data set that reaches into the millions of documents.  At one million documents, they will begin to consider a hosted solution — at five million documents, there’s little question they’ll want it externally hosted.  (Most hosting services will upload documents for a modest fee, expediting initial database setup.)
• Sensitivity of document ownership:  In multi-party/class-action cases, there can be sensitivity regarding who “controls” documents; parties don’t want one firm to benefit more than another through hosting control.  By hosting the case on an ASP, any sense of one firm having a leg up on another firm is eliminated.
• Disbursement of Costs:  The pricing structure of ASP hosting services facilitates disbursement of all costs associated with document warehousing.  There’s one invoice at the end of each month.  Under this model, it’s not necessary to bill a client (and attempt to justify billing!) for the many tasks involved in managing a case in-house.  Likewise, when case management costs are run as a disbursement, costs are recoverable in most jurisdictions.
• Inadequate security infrastructure:  A firm may look to outsource data- hosting if the firm lacks a security infrastructure to support external users entering their network.

On Your Local Machine (Sans Internet) and On Remote Servers 

Hard as it may be to imagine in an era when so many spots are equipped for wireless Internet access, there will be times when your road warriors are without Web access.  What then?  Your litigators have to be able to continue working on a case, online or offline.  It’s not practical or even possible for the traveling litigator to download a 1.5 million-document database (with document images) to her notebook.  But with an application on the market, it is possible to download discrete portions of the database from the online repositories — all documents authored by “Jeff Jones,” for example, or documents that meet a given search criteria — to the notebook computer.  These records can be annotated by the traveling attorney and then uploaded back to the online repository, with new annotations in place.  Under this model, key evidence is available whenever the litigator needs it.

The local client/online repository combination offers considerable flexibility to satisfy different user constituencies.  Litigation team members who want the repository-only solution may use the browser interface.  Conversely, team members who need to go on the road, use the computer on the plane, in non-wired courtrooms, etc., may use a software solution when they’re not connected and can connect to the data hosted on the online repository when a reliable connection is available.  (When connecting to an online repository the user has the option to use her local software, which is Web-enabled or to use the browser-based application.)

To give a sense of how combined online/online functionality can prove beneficial, consider the case of our fictional road warrior, Attorney Wanda Roberts. 

Roberts is flying cross-country to take a deposition.  In flight, she prepares for the deposition, using a litigation support program on her notebook computer to review previous deposition transcripts in the case for names and key words germane to tomorrow’s deposition.  Her searches point out an interesting contradiction regarding the dates of termination for a key player in the case.  Roberts discovers that the termination of a key witness in the case predated the plaintiff company’s submission of a Summary Laboratory Test Report to the FDA.  She realizes that she must investigate whether the terminated employee’s notes are consistent with the information in the summary lab test reports submitted to the FDA on the typed form.

After checking into her hotel room that evening, she plugs her computer into the ISDN line the hotel provides and connects to the Internet — and then to an ASP-hosted document repository in Boise that serves as a collaborative database for use by all parties to the case.  It contains all of the defendant company’s FDA submissions for the last 10 years.  Roberts selects the Idaho Depository database and conducts several searches.  After a short time, she spies a handwritten note by the terminated employee discussing the lab tests in question.  Without the online searching capability, this information would have been out of reach for Roberts, especially on a Sunday night.  She’s able to save the document images and associated summaries that she feels are critical to the coming deposition — including the handwritten note discussing the lab tests — down to her notebook computer.  This way, she is able to make further use of this information during this deposition or even later in the courtroom when she logs off the repository.

Keep YOUR Road Warriors Plugged In!

For the road warriors in your firm like Wanda, there are options for remotely accessing case information.  Choose the one(s) best suited for your organization, and give your traveling litigators access to online litigation databases anytime and from anywhere they choose.

About our author . . .

Samantha L. Miller is the Marketing Manager for Summation Legal Technologies, Inc.  Previously, she litigated commercial and class actions in Philadelphia and is admitted to practice law in several states.  She can be reached at smiller@summation.com.