Extranet Spotlight

Views from the Front Lines

By Neil E. Aresty

OUR IDEA for a Web-hosted litigation support system was born out of a consulting experience that we had over four years ago. In 1996 the Oklahoma bombing trial had been removed from federal district court, in Oklahoma, to the United States District Court in Denver, Colorado.

Judge Richard Maitch had a small problem on his hands; several thousand news reporters wanted access to the daily copy of the trial and hearing transcripts. He turned to his court reporter and suggested that he find a way to deal with it. He had to do something that would get the official transcripts into the hands of the news reporters and not clog up the court.

The court reporter turned to a local company to help them execute a plan where the official certified transcript would be published twice a day, on a secure Internet server. By publishing transcript on a single, secure Web server, the court was able to account for each and every reporter and news agency's purchase. After a while, some news editors started wondering why they even had to have reporters in Denver.

In addition to publishing the straight text of the transcripts, we saw the opportunity to capture the entire record, not just the court reporters transcript, and to author hyper links to the exhibits, the docket and the underlying docket items. Using Internet technologies we were able to produce a complete electronic counterpart of the record, hyperlinked to meaningful information and available to authorized people, virtually 24/7, worldwide.

One of the important lessons from that experience was how easy it was for the interested parties (including older justices) to access the electronic copy of the record authored with hypertext.

From that experience we decided to focus on the use of Internet technologies, specifically, hypertext (HTML), a web browser interface, e-mail, along with the traditional tools of a database management system and full text retrieval software in order to build a multi-functional, state of the art workspace to host a matter during its life cycle in litigation. Rather than to host the trial record we set out to build a system that the parties could use to prepare their case for trial.

For example, look at those case files and banker boxes that house all the work product, correspondence, transcripts, evidentiary materials and what not associated with a matter in litigation. Now imagine capturing all the other copies of data that sit in attorneys, paralegals, clients, and secretaries "shadow files," phone message slips, and calendars relating to the matter.

We said, "What if we could move all that information to a single, secure Web server, using the aforementioned Internet technologies?" What if we could build a set of tools to help the lawyers process that information to get it ready for trial?

In large part, that is what a Web hosted litigation support system is about. Clearly there are tremendous efficiencies associated with moving all that data to one place. There is no need for duplicate copy sets of any of the work product, pleadings, production documents, transcripts or exhibits. And the sum is greater than all the parts when you can get the litigation team working together off of a single document repository. Add to that some intelligent database design and the proper mix of hypertext and you've got a collaborative litigation environment that is more efficient and more powerful from an information perspective than the original physical files.

The result of these efforts is a product we call Lextranet. We have been called a Web-hosted document repository, yet it has always been our intention to be more than just a document repository. They also call us an application service provider (ASP); and a ".com" company, but it was never our intention to be categorized as either. The idea behind www.LextraNet.com is to provide legal professionals a secure work place on the Web to process a matter through its life cycle in litigation.

Neil E. Aresty is a principal at Legal Computer Solutions, Inc., in Boston, providers of LextraNet.