Second Opinions

What Can I Use to Index Documents When I Don't Need Full Search Tools?

By James Eidelman

FIRST OF ALL, I'm curious why you don't want to keep the full text. I think it's a mistake because searching for legal terms, statutory references, and fact-oriented words can be a big help in finding prior work product on point, and it takes no extra effort to index the full text.

Now... about selecting software to index your briefs:

First, let's define terms. To litigators, it's a brief bank. To transactional lawyers, it's a document retrieval/ document management system.

These terms are used interchangeably in this article.

You may want a "brief bank" of your own documents, or a brief bank of documents by lawyers outside your firm.

1. Managing documents in-house

These days, computer people use terms like "document management," "litigation support," "knowledge management," and "search engine" to describe document organizing functions. When lawyers charge from $150 per hour to more than $500 per hour, the value of legal intellectual work product is high, and the value of a document retrieval system/brief bank is also high. And its value grows as the size and volume of the firm grows.

But in the long run, all systems will fail unless they are set up in a way that 1) uses the software people are already using; 2) captures the data in real-time; and 3) uses good searching tools to search and filter (to give users good "bang for the buck" to see the benefits of entering the data.)

Attorneys and staff just won't enter the data unless it is integrated into their other applications.

Today's software has become so powerful that you can perform these functions using combinations of dozens of tools. The reason you can't find special "brief bank" packages is that other software works just as well, or better, and is easier to integrate into your practice. These tools include:

Document management packages:

-- iManage, PC DOCS, WorldDox.

-- Microsoft tools (the new "Tahoe" (code name) document management server, integrated with Outlook/Exchange and Word.

Pure Web-based tools:

-- Microsoft (Index Server, SQL, Access, Windows 2000 and BackOffice, Office).

Case management with integrated document management:

(If you can integrate with basic case information, it provides a much more useful tool. The system should use the search function in a case management database, if it has enough flexibility, or have a document management system that integrates with a table of case information.)

Litigation support packages
Database packages

2. Outside Brief Banks

Don't "reinvent the wheel." There are a number of sources on the Web for briefs. Many organizations, such as trial lawyers, criminal defense lawyers, insurance lawyers, contract lawyers, etc. maintain brief banks for their members.

For example, ATLA's Washington State chapter has Trial Briefs, Appellate Briefs, and Amicus Briefs. Some of them have gone to quite a lot of effort to code the briefs and embed hyperlinks to citations.

And there are commercial sites that have briefs, including briefreporter.

3. Getting Started

If you do have a document management system: Use it! It's already integrated into the daily operations of the firm and has the features you need. Think about your document types. Add some fields that will be helpful in your practice. Set up some queries and reports that are useful.

Get your colleagues and staff to buy into taking the time to enter the information that makes the queries useful. If that information "lives" in a case management, billing or other application, link to the information that is already being entered by other people if you can.

Be sure to change your query screens so that you can search for the case-related information.

If you don't have a document management system: You can set Microsoft Word or WordPerfect options to query for the document properties every time you save.Turn that on and use it, and add custom properties if you need to. You can view those properties in Outlook, with all of the filtering, grouping and sorting facilities Outlook views have, or search them using Microsoft Index Services. (It uses the Microsoft Web server, IIS. Both are free with NT or Win2K.) MS Index Server supports free "ifilters" from third party vendors to index WordPerfect and PDF files.

But dtSearch provides out-of-the-box searching of Word, WordPerfect, PDF, HTML, ASCII, and many other formats), and with more control over the searching. It can search both the fields and full text. If you "live in" other applications, such as litigation support, Lotus Notes, or other case management systems, then save your documents in that application. They all have the ability to customize fields, views (search, sort, filter, and display or print), and to search text.

And there are dozens of other packages and approaches, both on your network and online. If it is truly important to you to build a separate application, use a text-oriented database or litigation support application, such as AskSam or Concordance. Get started, use the tools you know, and if those tools run out of steam, export the data to something more powerful.

For briefs and other documents drafted outside your firm: Many local and national bar associations have online brief banks that are helpful for your jurisdictions and specialized areas of practice. Find them and give them a try. A search of a few search engines will come up with a list with which you can get started.

Consider using "application service providers." For example, West's WestWorks has built-in document management and retrieval that's integrated with your word processing and case information. Vendors such as www.caseshare.com and www.lextranet.com can host a customized Web-based application.

James Eidelman is president of Eidelman Associates, an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based consulting firm.