I was in court today and I witnessed another attorney call his office to speak to his assistant. He instructed his assistant to contact another attorney in the office who had authored an initial draft of a brief. The assistant was to get two things from the other attorney that were referenced in the draft: (1) a portion of a transcript, and (2) a document.

What I found amusing was that in the amount of time that the attorney spent on the telephone telling his assistant what he wanted, I could have probably found the same information in one of my files. This is because I keep all of my files paperless and I use the CaseMap suite of programs to manage my documents, facts, and transcripts.

Finding information in a transcript is as easy as looking for the relevant words. Similarly, finding a document is as easy as searching for any number of fields including the author, recipient, date, or relevant information.

I am not saying that you have to use the same programs that I use. There are a variety of programs available to help you manage your documents, transcripts, and other case information. The programs include programs such as Lexis-Nexis Front Office, Summation, Concordance, iConect, JFS Litigator’s Notebook, and LiveNote.

The important point is that you should be using some program to keep your information organized and available to you at a moment’s notice.

Not only with this make you more efficient, it also means that you won’t be using time of your assistant and other attorneys to track down information.