Trial Consulting the IT way!
We have all read in books of history about how our forefathers used to practice trade when there was no currency. There was always something in place like barter system to facilitate the transactions which is financial in nature. The world moved on since then and made a lot of progress to make us look a literate and more organized breed of homo-sapiens with a more developed brains than our forefathers. Lot of progress has been made at all fronts. From barter system to currencies, from wooden wheels to alloy wheels with floating disk brakes, from a pair of oxen to drive a cart to combustion engines, from caves to skyscrapers. Everything has developed in leaps and bounds.
But very few may have anticipated about how the things are evolving in the Litigation Industry today. With the advent of IT revolution the manual process and piles of documents & files have taken a back stage. It has given birth to a whole new industry ‘Litigation Support’ Reviewing softwares have replaced the traditional desks of an Attorney, Courtroom now a day looks like a movie set were attorneys uses all sophisticated gadgets to showcase a visual presentation of their arguments and points. (Before someone starts to visualize and compare it to the current practice observed in your country’s trials and judiciary system, hold on!! This is confined to U.S. as of now. ) There is a significant and comprehensive change in the litigation technology used by the big law firms in America. Services like network forensics, e-discovery to name a few are now widely recognized and practiced.
According to a comprehensive survey conducted with 117 law firms and 53 corporations during the first six months of 2010, The Cowen Group, Litigation Support Departments at major law firms and inside corporate counsel offices are experiencing double digit growth in workload during 2010.
A glance at the statistics:
Hours are Up
69 law firms have reported an increase in hours worked by their litigation support departments.
22 corporations reported an increase in hours worked by their litigation support departments.
Work on New Matters is Up
58 law firms reported an increase in litigation support and eDiscovery workload from new case matters
15 corporations reported an increase in litigation support and eDiscovery workload from new case matters
Work on Existing Matters is Up
59 law firms reported a new increase in litigation support and eDiscovery workload from existing case matters
16 corporations reported a new increase in litigation support and eDiscovery workload from existing case matters
Hiring Plans are Up
51 law firms reported plans to add to their litigation support and eDiscovery staff
12 corporations reported plans to add to their litigation support and eDiscovery staff
Training Budgets are Up
22 law firms reported increases in their budget for training their litigation support staff
7 corporations reported increases in their budget for training their litigation support staff
Technical Investment Budgets are Up
26 law firms reported increases in their budget for purchasing new litigation technology
8 corporations reported increases in their budget for purchasing new litigation technology
Phew!! Figures and stats signify that future is bright and glitzy. Let’s keep the numbers aside for the management and business forecasters; this is something the IT guys may not find interesting, yeah, they can certainly dream to buy an Aston Martin some day, duh! Looking at the figures and anticipating the pockets full of money!!
Interesting fact is how different technologies are getting born and at the speed they are invading the courtrooms is something significant!
Such a technology is Trial Consulting. Now WT% is that!! Before you guys google to see WT% is this, here is the wiki definition of it:
“Trial consulting is the use of social scientists, particularly psychologists and communication experts and economists, to aid attorneys in the presentation of a criminal trial or civillawsuit. Modern trial consultants help prepare witnesses, improve arguments and rhetoric, and select juries”
Being an IT professional you may argue “So!! Why should I care! My use is not there you see!”. Well, not exactly. The new trial consulting practice adopted by many litigation technology firms to assist the big law houses is worth noticing and something interesting to know about. Now what major difference this makes to traditional trial consulting! It’s like dreaming about Jessica Alba and dreaming about Jessica Alba with her picture in front!!
As we all know the adage "A picture is worth a thousand words”. In the layman terms trial consulting technology refers to the idea that a complex idea can be conveyed with just a single still image. It also aptly characterizes one of the main goals of visualization, namely making it possible to absorb large amounts of data quickly.
It’s like…
“Bicameral Images reveal our two selves”
Okay! I ain’t made the term. If you will google it out you will find that the term was coined by psychologist Julian Jaynes, who presented the idea in his 1976 book “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”. Woah! That’s a big title! Well who cares about this book! (Pardon me if I have offended anybody by saying this). The point is trial consulting tech concept makes our right brain working (The part of the brain which many professionals in this industry have seldom used). It’s a powerful pact between the new age media technologies and expert knowledge of trial consultants. It’s about information design, it’s about developing the visual strategies for cases, it’s about the way you craft the information in the most effective and enthralling way by translating the tangled legal concepts into high impact visuals. For all those who hate the facts and figures in form of dull and gloomy documents, here is a chance to soak themselves in pool of visual representations garnished with logical and conceptualized legal facts and figures.
Who doesn’t likes to be in the driving seat of a Ferrari F40! A wisely chosen trial consulting technology service surely gives you that position to remain ahead in case. Well but as we all know Ferrari comes at a cost or to be precise it can burn a hole in your wallet so does the trial consulting services! Big guns going for it may have to cough up lot of bucks. Some may rate the use of it as maintaining a fashion and brand obsessed girl friend.
The cost factor may be a barrier in making trial consulting technology a popular and widely adopted practice, but a bright future is waiting for this kid and nobody can deny it.
Nirav Gehlot
Tech Analyst
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