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The Best Thing A Young Lawyer Can Do Is Learn Technology

Sorry, law grads, but writing as fast as you can without checking any legal authority isn't useful in the real world.

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young lawyer associate laptop computer tech technologyDear Lawyers Who Just Passed the Bar or Are Studying for the Next Bar Exam:

Soon, you’ll find that your advanced knowledge of the elements of the tort of battery and your ability to write as fast as you can without checking any legal authority is not going to do you very much good in the real world.

There are going to be some things you are going to want to do right off the bat. Get a mentor. Join some trade organizations. Learn about office politics. Learn that the best thing you can do in the office is be nice to your secretary. If you want to do things a little bit above your paygrade, learn technology.

When I started my legal career, the big news in the legal industry was that first-year salaries were jumping from $125,000 to $160,000. I have since heard a rumor that salaries have maybe jumped to $180,000, but I’ll have to check my sources on that. Not long after the short-lived joy of the bump to 160, the economy tanked, and I realized that I would now be competing not just with my classmates, but with all of the underemployed first-, second-, and third-year lawyers who knew more about practicing law and would work for first-year rates. I had to stand out by learning technology.

Ediscovery

I teach at UCSD’s Litigation Technology program, where we focus heavily on ediscovery. I have also taught several CLEs on ediscovery. In both groups, I always have participants who are attending because they want to advance in their firms or have some lateral leverage. As I’ve discussed numerous times before, ediscovery is simply the future of litigation. Just as the world moved on from microfiche, it will move on from storing our records on pressed, bleached sheets of precision-cut tree pulp. When that transition is complete, there are going to be a lot of litigators wondering how long they have to respond to a request for production of 300 mb of .pst files or how much that will cost, whether self-collection is a good idea, what clawback is, what litigation holds are, what are the first steps you take to ensure that your client or your firm will not be liable for spoliation due to auto-delete data policies. That’s where you come in.

Here’s how you get started: Go to the Sedona Conference’s website. Look at the program outline for the last conference they had and read the program descriptions. That will let you know what the current trends are. Google those topics and find one of the several excellent blog posts on each topic. Read the materials on the Sedona Conference website. Read this Primer on Ediscovery. Read the comments to the recent 2015 FRCP amendments. Find the right person to talk to at your firm (but be careful to maintain chain of command) and see if there is an ediscovery committee or a technology committee. Point out that large law firms that cater to businesses are creating ediscovery committees or practice areas to attract new clients.

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Trial Presentation

If you are in litigation, you know the most elite positions are for the trial attorneys. Insurance companies keep indices on attorneys and whether they take cases to trial or settle them. Offers get more significant closer to trial. You might be a wicked good motion writer or researcher, but the bottom line is that no one will fear you if you can only win little motion battles, but have no experience winning the war at trial. Usually, it’s very difficult to get trial experience. On the defense side, the client or the insurance carrier likely has rules that say only a partner with X number of trials or years of experience can be the trial attorney. On the plaintiffs’ side, there is so much riding on the outcome (like getting paid for all the work you’ve done and being able to secure a future for your clients) that it’s rare that the senior attorneys will hand the reins over to a junior lawyer.

If you want experience in the courtroom learning the procedures and the skills that make a great trial attorney, learn to be invaluable in the courtroom by having some auxiliary role. For me, that was learning how to put together trial presentations and present the evidence in court. That made it so that before I graduated law school, I had sat through at counsel table approximately 20 jury trials. It’s a reason why, to this day, I get asked to help more senior attorneys on cases.

How to get started: Call a trial presentation company or go to their website and download a free trial of the software. Most trial techs are self-taught and you can learn a lot between a free limited trial and the help manuals. Go to the courthouse and find which departments are in trial and watch the cases. If it’s a big case, there will likely be a trial tech there. Watch how they present the evidence to see the final product of how the evidence is presented. After you’ve gotten a grasp on the basics, ask to go to trial to present the evidence electronically and use a document camera as a backup to make the attorney feel safer. If you do a good job, you won’t need the document camera.

Conclusion

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There are certainly a lot of fundamental skills you will need to know as a lawyer, but those will come with experience. If you want to stay ahead of the curve a little, learn to separate yourself from the rest with some technical skills.

Jeff Bennion is Of Counsel at Estey & Bomberger LLP, a plaintiffs’ law firm specializing in mass torts and catastrophic injuries. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of San Diego’s plaintiffs’ trial lawyers association, Consumer Attorneys of San Diego. He is also the Education Chair and Executive Committee member of the State Bar of California’s Law Practice Management and Technologysection. He is a member of the Advisory Council and instructor at UCSD’s Litigation Technology Management program. His opinions are his own. Follow him on Twitter here or on Facebook here, or contact him by email at jeff@trial.technology.

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