Clients provide push for new technology

Smack in the middle of the year of electronic discovery, legal technology experts say client demand is fueling a new push for expanded technology use at law firms.

Whether mapping a chronology for a medical malpractice suit or editing hundreds of hours of video depositions for a stirring visual aid during trial, software programs - and those who administer training and advice for such programs - are rapidly gaining popularity among local firms that want to keep organized and keep at the top of their game.

A lot of firms are starting to put [legal technology] into place, said Lori Bregenzer, a St. Louis legal consultant. They need someone to help address that need, and they need somebody to help them do software and hardware recommendations.

Bregenzer worked for the computer systems group at Armstrong Teasdale L.L.P. before taking an interest in litigation software. Before long, she had studied the process of litigation and became a certified trainer in Summation, a type of legal software that indexes documents and manages transcripts, depositions and other legal documents.

The software is particularly helpful for paralegals, Bregenzer said, who must keep track of hundreds of documents and be able to produce them at a moment's notice.

As a paralegal, you're sitting here faced with one box or one hundred boxes of documents during discovery, she said. You're the go- to person when people will say, 'Find this document.' And as a good paralegal, you need to create an index of what's in those boxes.

Bregenzer left Armstrong Teasdale in 2002, leaving in her wake a fully staffed technology department. While taking a short break from the legal community, paralegals from around St. Louis kept calling her with requests for training, she said. Her consulting business, Innovative Legal Technologies, grew out of those requests.

Her consulting work has expanded primarily by word of mouth, Bregenzer said. The first advertising she did was last week as a guest vendor at the annual luncheon of the St. Louis Association of Legal Assistants.

As a technology consultant and certified Summation trainer, medium-sized firms with 10 to 30 attorneys make up the bulk of Bregenzer's clients, she said.

That particular client base is not surprising, she said, because at $2,500 for a single user license for Summation, the software does not come cheap.

But smaller firms are starting to contact her with software requests; part of her job is coming up with lower-cost technology alternatives for smaller firms.

Basic training in Summation software lasts two full days, Bregenzer said, but she prefers to break up the material into several half-day sessions.

One of Bregenzer's most interesting consulting experiences was a six-week product liability trial out of Kansas City that was handled by a St. Louis firm.

The firm's attorneys collected more than 250 depositions, most of which were videotaped, she said.

Bregenzer used Summation to annotate the testimonies and exported more than 4,000 video clips into Sanction, a trial presentation software. The program worked as an excellent litigation tool, she said, especially when showing video to the jury with text scrolling underneath.

Some people will retain more if they're reading versus just seeing it, she said of the scrolling text. So they get to read and hear it, and get to see actual person. [The jury] wouldn't get that if [testimony] were being read into record. This way, they get to see their body language and hear the tone of their voice.

Databases and paralegals

Pat Mangum, a paralegal for Fox Galvin L.L.C., joined the firm in January 2005.

Seventeen years at an Oklahoma law firm equipped her with some experience in legal technology, Mangum said. But after Bregenzer trained her in Summation, Mangum found she was able to use the software in more creative ways to meet her indexing needs.

As a paralegal who thinks outside the box, Mangum said she tweaked and more effectively used Summation last year on a product liability case, one of her very first projects at the firm. With Bregenzer's help, Mangum was able to tailor the program to capture some unique information outside of regular documents.

Entering volumes upon volumes of documents and the coding process is a little tedious, but you have to invest some time in it, she said. I like the searching capabilities.

Basic knowledge of legal software programs like Summation is becoming almost a requirement for paralegals, Mangum said, unless they work for a large firm with its own technology department.

A paralegal who can work in a database - well, it only enhances our value, she said.

Legal tech trends

The biggest trend in legal technology is electronic discovery, said Dennis Kennedy, a part-time lawyer and consultant based in St. Louis who used to work for Thompson Coburn L.L.P.

This is really the year of electronic discovery, Kennedy said. It's gotten everyone's attention. People are realizing they have to deal with that.