Electronic Briefing for Barristers 1 What is electronic briefing? - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Electronic Briefing for Barristers 1

What is electronic briefing? 2 The providing of the relevant documents of a brief by way of commonly accepted electronic formats such as Word document, PDF document, JPEG image, MP3 audio or MP4 video  By USB/flash drive or a cloud service such as Dropbox or OneDrive  Requires the initial scanning of documents and sorting into folders (can be delegated)  Scans can be made searchable either automatically or manually  Creates an up to date, accessible and editable brief of virtually unlimited size

The current methods for briefing barristers 3  Physical brief  USB brief  Cloud brief

Physical brief 4 Advantages Disadvantages  Traditional  Costly  Time consuming  Well understood  Reliable  Difficult to index  Difficult to update  Not readily portable  Takes up space and paper  Not easily searchable

USB brief 5 Advantages Disadvantages  Easy to share and to  Requires scanning & make copies sorting  Documents can be  Involves physical made searchable handover  Accessible and portable  Requires updating by  Size is essentially email unlimited  Assists with electronic disclosure

Cloud brief 6 The sharing of an electronic brief over the internet by way of a secured server that it is accessible by both solicitor and barrister  Features Requires the scanning of individual documents ▪ Same organisational structure as physical briefs ▪ The structure of the brief can be easily changed by ▪ adding, deleting or moving files and folders An important feature of Windows called the “Preview ▪ pane” can be utilized to view, rename or delete documents without having to individually open and close them Sharing the cloud brief allows members to view and/or ▪ edit the brief Backups can be made at any time ▪

Advantages of a cloud brief 1 7  You or your counsel have 24 hour access from any location to view and edit the brief  Other solicitors or barristers can be shared into the brief without requiring any additional work  Documents can be made searchable a.k.a. optical character recognition (OCR)  There is no need to send different versions of documents back and forth by email  There is no size restrictions as there is with email

Advantages of a cloud brief 2 8  Bates numbering can be applied to create page specific documents  Indexes can be prepared for physical briefs based on Bates numbering  Members can update the brief instantly  Documents from the brief can be “simultaneously edited” over the Internet where each participant can see each others changes in real time - advanced  When used in collaboration with Skype simultanous editing creates a “virtual office” regardless of location which saves time, money and travel – advanced

Disadvantages of a cloud 9 brief?  Transition and learning curve – this can be mitigated by a step by step approach, such as: Trying the “Preview pane” ▪ Accepting a USB brief (in addition to a physical brief) ▪ Making documents searchable ▪  If two people are editing the same document at the same time and they are not doing so over the Internet i.e. simultaneous editing then two versions of the document will be created (to avoid conflicts)

Software involved 10 A scanner  Preferably one with software installed that makes scanned ▪ documents automatically searchable Otherwise a software program like Nuance PaperPort Professional ▪ 14 which converts documents from almost all scanners to searchable – RRP $266 Preview pane  Activated from the Windows, File Explorer menu bar - Free ▪ Nuance Power PDF Advanced  Converts individual or groups of documents to PDF searchable ▪ Allows Bates numbering and redacting of documents ▪ Allows extracting, inserting and combining of PDF documents – ▪ RRP $225 Adobe Acrobat Professional  Similar to Power PDF and perhaps more advanced but more costly ▪ – RRP $699 Windows search index and PDF ifilter  Enables PDFs to be searched from folders or drives (advanced) - ▪ Free Without this feature documents are still individually searchable ▪

Conclusion 11  Physical briefs are reliable and practical but they can be improved upon with the replacement or addition of a USB or cloud brief  Productivity can be improved by:  24 hour access to view and edit files  Greater search functionality  Share briefs instantly  Update the brief instantly  Unlimited file size  Going it alone?  Advantage of searchable documents  Portable and accessible  Easy to update brief  Easy to make updated physical copies