Today's Tech: How An Attorney Uses Cloud Software To Manage Litigation

When a firm has an entire team of people working on a single litigation matter, the right software can make all the difference.

Digital TechnologyI often scour popular online lawyer forums in search of examples of lawyers using cutting-edge software “in the wild.” I’m interested in reading about how and why they use the software and, if it seems like a good fit for this column, I’ll reach out to them to see if they’d be interested in sharing their experiences.

Such was this case with the lawyer featured in today’s post. I read with interest Matthew Crider’s description in the MILO forum regarding how he uses Factbox in his law practice. I’ve written about this web-based software – which helps lawyers organize and connect all of the facts, notes, evidence, and ideas in their cases in one central location – a few times in the past, and I have always been curious to gain a better understanding of how attorneys put it to use in a litigation practice. So when I stumbled on Matthew’s comment indicating that Factbox was a useful tool in his practice, I immediately sent him an email.

Matthew’s firm often handles complex trust litigation and divorce matters and has been using Factbox for the better part of a year. He explains that he switched to it from more traditional premise-based software after his firm switched from PCs to Macs: “I began using FactBox in September 2015, so I’ve been using it for over 9 months. Many years ago, I used CaseMap, formerly owned by CaseSoft, now owned by LexisNexis. I enjoyed using that application, and could immediately see its benefit in a litigation practice. However, in 2012, I switched my entire office to Macs. I didn’t want to use legacy Windows-based software, and was looking for an application that provided functionality allowing me to organize facts and issues in a platform-independent cloud-based environment. FactBox fit the bill!”

According to Matthew, when a firm has an entire team of people working on a single litigation matter, software like Factbox can make all the difference: “One of the advantages of Factbox is that it allows firms like ours to move away from information siloing, where information or facts are kept on one person’s machine, or in another person’s head. Instead, Factbox allows all team members to gather information and enter it in one centralized location.”

That’s the big selling point for Matthew: Factbox excels at making it easy for lawyers to identify and organize facts within a case. “It doesn’t supplant an attorney’s analysis of the facts, but it helps because we can access the information in different ways. For example, for a family law case that we’re handling we’ve got three major issues. Factbox allows me to set up each issue within the software and then add facts supporting each issue. And, because it’s a database platform we can quickly manipulate the information to help us better organize the information,” he explains. “We can search by date or keywords. So if we’re looking for a particular account that we think the husband pulled money out of, we can search for references to that account.

According to Matthew, the software is beneficial for both solos and small firms who works with teams on a case, since it allows everyone on the team to be on the same page: “Once we receive a deposition transcript, it needs to be summarized. If we were doing this in the traditional way in a Word document, we’d have columns with categories, which works well, but it takes time to read through it. Instead, with Factbox it is summarized within the software and we can then search by keyword or phrase and generate a report on it. So that becomes the backbone for further discovery and for direct examination during trial.”

Another way his firm uses Factbox is to identify and track documents that they have deemed to be privileged. “When we get a stack of documents from the client, we review them. Next we enter descriptions of each document into Factbox and, if applicable, create a custom tag, ‘privileged.’ That way when we get discovery demands we can easily create a privilege log by searching for the ‘privileged’ tag.”

Sponsored

Because Matthew has found technology like Factbox to be beneficial to his practice, he encourages other lawyers to likewise familiarize themselves with the ever-changing legal technology landscape: “To borrow from Nike: Just Do It! Don’t wait for the ‘perfect’ tech solution. Adopting technology now can have huge effects on your firm now and in the future. The technology landscape is changing so quickly, and has changed remarkably within the last 10 years.”

So that’s how one attorney uses Factbox in his practice. As always, if you or an attorney you know is using technology in a creative or unusual way in your law firm, drop me an email at niki.black@mycase.com. I’m always looking for new attorneys, law professors, or judges to feature in this column.


Niki BlackNicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and the Legal Technology Evangelist at MyCase, web-based law practice management software. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter at@nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.

Sponsored

CRM Banner