For attorneys, dealing with boxes and boxes of paper discovery documents is the norm. But as courts and prosecuting attorneys are beginning to provide documents digitally, defense attorneys can be caught unprepared.

Faced with trying State v. Valentini, the largest gambling conspiracy case in Arizona history, criminal defense attorney Howard Snader knew his old paper-based system wouldn’t work any longer.

“I was retained in a criminal defense matter where the state’s discovery documents were provided in digital format,” Snader says. “Although I could read the documents, I couldn’t search them in any meaningful way.”

Snader found that opening every single page was cumbersome and completely ineffective. “I would have had to print each page as I read it, and with more than 30 defendants and an initial discovery of nearly 150,000 pages, that’s a significant amount of paper,” he explains. “I would have spent weeks reading and marking the necessary evidence, and I’d have to do it each time I needed to prepare another motion.”

“In Arizona, court systems are forcing attorneys to move into the 21st century, because many of them are now providing all evidentiary documents electronically,” says Greg Dutton, managing partner of ArcWare Solutions, the Laserfiche reseller that oversaw Snader’s Laserfiche implementation. “From our experience, law firms in Arizona are significantly behind the curve and need to catch up.”

Snader’s firm was a prime example of this. “I believed I had no need for document management, so I had no system in place,” he remembers. “After I saw what Laserfiche could do, I realized the need was there. Not only would I be able to deal with the ongoing discovery of police reports, medical records and financial statements, I’d also be able to securely archive files, destroy hard copies and save on storage fees.”

A practicing attorney since 1988 and a certified specialist in criminal law since 1995, Snader knew that minimizing time spent on discovery and money spent on storage was key to his firm’s success. When he found Laserfiche, he knew that its upfront cost would return enormous dividends. “I really looked at Laserfiche as an investment,” Snader says. “The ease of access, support and training, as well as the software’s capabilities, made this the best choice for my practice.”

Dutton believes that, like Snader, many attorneys underestimate the utility of a document management solution. “Case preparation software does only what it was designed to do. Laserfiche can provide case preparation functionality, as well as manage all of the documentation for the day-to-day business of your entire practice, including accounting, billing and HR records,” he says.

“When you consider that attorneys receive information in so many formats—including paper, PDFs and other types of electronic documents—a system that can manage all those disparate formats from a single screen ends up providing an incredible ROI,” Dutton adds. “In fact, Laserfiche could be a law firm’s single best software investment.”

Faced with the mountain of evidence in State v. Valentini, Snader wholeheartedly agreed. “With Laserfiche, it’s not just about saving time, money and providing a valuable resource for clients—which it certainly does. It’s also about competitive advantage. Laserfiche is a powerful tool that enables me to show prosecutors and clients the strength and weaknesses of a case by just pushing a few keys.”

In fact, with Laserfiche’s sophisticated search tools at his disposal, Snader was the first defense attorney in the case to submit a motion to remand for his client—and the only one to submit his motion by its original due date in June.

“I’m amazed how quickly and easily I can locate information,” he says. “I was able to show the prosecutor that he failed to provide any testimony on a key issue, simply because I could immediately find the information.

“That would have been incredibly time-consuming with boxes of documents or printed PDFs,” he adds.

Dutton agrees, “The way the county provided documents to Mr. Snader made discovery even more difficult—and Laserfiche even more important. Because each page was provided as a separate file, it was quite difficult to tell what pages belonged to what records.

“Worse yet,” he adds, “it was nearly impossible for someone without technical know-how to figure out. But by using Laserfiche, in just a matter of hours, I was able to reconstruct all the discovery documents, fully migrate them into Laserfiche, make every page full-text searchable and teach Snader to do it all himself.”

“It took less than four hours to get Laserfiche installed and for me to learn how to use it,” Snader says. “Laserfiche’s help tools are phenomenal, the tutorials are excellent and the software is very user-friendly. It has a learning curve like any other software, but the end result was much better than I expected. I’ve definitely saved more time than I thought was possible.”

Snader plans to complete the discovery issues in State v. Valentini and continue on to scanning and archiving all his closed files. In fact, Laserfiche has even helped him market himself, as he can handle larger cases with even larger volumes of discovery documents.

“Laserfiche is a perfect complement to my growing practice,” Snader says. “It’s an easy-to-use product that provides fantastic results and is a great value for the cost.

“Other products may be less expensive,” he adds, “but they certainly don’t provide the same quality or capability.”

Tags: courts, law, lawyers, legal, ROI

Posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 5:06 pm under Customer Stories, Other Industries. You can comment on this post.