Using Technology in the Management and Trial of Complex Cases

Authors

• Fred Misko Jr.
• Charles E. Ames

Abstract

As modem society became more technologically advanced, complex tort and mass disaster litigation was sure to follow suit. Over the last twenty years, cases involving post-industrial products such as breast implants, heart valves, pesticides, Agent Orange, Bendectin, lead, and asbestos, as well as single-event mass disasters such as Bhopal and PanAm Flight 103, brought increasingly large numbers of individuals claiming serious injuries before the courts. The legal community has recently begun to focus on the impact that this complex litigation has on the practice of law and the administrative capabilities of the judicial system. Gone are the days when a lawyer could manage even the most convoluted case in his head with the help of two or three boxes of documents. As society has become more technologically complex, it has become more difficult for the mind to absorb and keep pace with the information being generated. Moreover, as cases become more complex, they become more difficult for jurors to assimilate and comprehend, particularly over the course of a lengthy trial. Computer-assisted litigation support comes into play in this type of situation. In a nutshell, computer-assisted litigation support allows a lawyer to have ready electronic access to massive amounts of information, without the necessity of fumbling through boxes of documents or leafing through pages of deposition transcripts. The days of paralegals meticulously filing away index cards have given way to electronic scanning of files for future retrieval from laptop computers. Standing before a jury and reading a witness' deposition testimony and presenting thousands of documents, page by page, is being replaced by images called up by remote control and flashed before the jury on large-screen television monitors. As case complexity increases, solutions for managing and presenting them similarly become more complex. This paper presents a few tips for meeting this challenge. .

Recommended Citation

Fred Misko & Charles E. Ames, Using Technology in the Management and Trial of Complex Cases, 1 Computer L. Rev. & Tech. J. 1 (1997)