New Sedona Conference Report Now Available for Download

The Sedona Conference has released The Sedona Conference® Commentary on Achieving Quality in the E-Discovery Process. It is well worth reading.

Ralph Losey Nails It!

Of course, you should be reading Ralph Losey's e-Discovery Team blog directly, but for those who inexplicably aren't, don't miss his latest broadside against the Elders of the American Trial Lawyers Association.

Automate Your References!

I write a lot of briefs, edit still more, and most of them contain multiple cross-references. A cross-reference might be to a page (supra at 13); a section (as discussed more fully in Point II) or a combination thereof.

Yet, the vast majority of attorneys and their word processors manually type these cross-references. This means that with every editing change, each such reference needs to be reviewed to make sure that it is still accurate.

These attorneys seem unaware or afraid of Microsoft Word's ability to automate that process, so that no matter how much editing occurs, your cross-references will stay accurate. A great and thorough explanation of that ability is in the current article, Cross Referencing in Word, at the Office Watch site.

Mark Lanier at Harvard

Mark Lanier recently gave an excellent "war stories" lecture to a Harvard Law Torts Class. Although the subject was how to be a great litigation lawyer generally, there's plenty of great examples and discussion on the use of PowerPoint at trial. Watch and learn.

PS--The professor also provides a great example of how not to introduce a guest speaker: First, read a long introduction so your audience knows you really don't know anything about this guy. Second, read it fast so everybody knows the actual practice of law is far beneath you.

Animation in PowerPoint

Ellen Finkelstein has a great tutorial on animation in PowerPoint.

Where's Waldo?

As hard as it is to find Waldo, it's often harder and always more important to locate that critical witness for your case. There are a number of free internet sites that can help you do that. Here are five of the best:

1. ZabaSearch

This one has a very large database, which is good, but if you are searching for someone armed only with a common name, you’ll get an unwieldy result. ZabaSearch also provides historical address information, home address, birth date, phone number, and the ability to contact the person by email.

2. Spock

Spock's best feature is information about a person’s footprint on the Internet, rather than basic details like phone numbers and addresses. Spock draws info from blogs, Wikipedia articles, photo sharing sites, social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn), social bookmarking sites, and more.

3. Yasni

Like Spock, Yasni gives you a picture of the person on the Internet. Unlike Spock, however, Yasni will email you if your search name is mentioned on the Internet. (Of course, you can also use Google Alerts for this.)

4. Pipl

Pipl does a “deep web search” to find all kinds of information about someone, from their address and contact info to any publications they have ever posted to the Internet.

5. 123People

123people shows pictures of people, so you can quickly filter out all the wrong people. It also lists out all the email addresses it can find.

Hat tip: Online Tech Tips

Good E-discovery List

The September 2008 issue of BullsEye Newsletter has an thorough, annotated collection of e-discovery resources.