By Mark Lieb © 2006 Ad Litem Consulting, Inc.

Is a legal background a prerequisite to providing top level litigation support? Can a firm hire an IT person and teach them to provide world class litigation support? These are questions facing most firms today. As the need for litigation support professionals becomes greater, firms with existing Litigation Support Departments are looking at both the paralegal and IT markets to find that next hire. For a field that becomes more technical daily, the selection of a technically trained professional is an obvious choice. The marketplace has plenty of network engineers and programmers. One can "borrow" from the firm's own IT Department, but then that leaves another position open. Concurrently, colleges are graduating new technicians all the time. Fresh to market, their salary expectations can be quite reasonable.

Until recently an IT position did pay more than a Litigation Support job.
There was also a greater chance for advancement. This seems to be changing as supply-demand economics and larger departments raise prices and job titles. At the top are those persons with the most experience who manage the department and consult with the legal teams. Below them are the "operations" folk, who primarily load data and create cds. The introduction of electronic discovery has forced the Litigation Support role to become technical. Photocopies were easy to manage by comparison. A paralegal could work on a case and contract for legal copying. Today, Litigation Support is a full time occupation responsible for a suite of software tools, monitoring server capacity, network utilization and other technical factors. This is in addition to working on projects specific to any client matter.

Litigation Support is also responsible for managing copious amounts of data, images and associated files. Remote access, storage, backup and disaster recovery are very real concerns for the Litigation Support Department. Tools, like Dataflight's FYI Server, provide an accounting of storage, bandwidth and other, traditionally, IT concerns. A person with a technical background will feel very comfortable representing the Litigation Department's best interests when addressing these types of concerns with the IT Department and outside vendors. But, will that same person be as confident when handling litigation case issues?

The transition from IT to Lit Support worked for me and for IT people I have coached into the marketplace. One can come from a tech background and succeed in this role. In fact, a formally trained technician may be the best person to recognize tech strategies which result in quicker review and lower vendor bills. Forensics may be new to many litigators and paralegals, but the technology is old news for IT professionals. The same is true for much of the technology just now entering the litigation software marketplace. Technicians are problem solvers who handle high pressure and short turnaround times in order to support every department, application and office for their company. They should be able to support the Litigation Department and a limited suite of applications.

The question before law firms today is whether to train someone who has an advanced technology education but a novice understanding of case lifecycle and the law to provide litigation support. The answer depends upon what type of support this person will provide. If the person is modifying load files, administrating user logins, burning images and converting ediscovery into databases, a technical background is advantageous. The new hire will learn about the case lifecycle and what is important during department and case team meetings. They can attend webinars and read books, like Litigation Support Department. As this person becomes more familiar with how technology compliments the case lifecycle, they will know enough to provide consulting to the legal team. While legal strategies change from one matter to another, the case lifecycle remains consistent. Collect, review, produce, depose, trial, rinse and repeat as necessary. Once learned, the litigation support professional ! can provide consultative, in addition to technical effort to the case. This person will never file a motion, read a document or depose a witness. Their concerns and value lie elsewhere.

Some law firms have each litigation support person provide both the project management and technical work for their assigned cases. For these firms, the prospect of hiring a case lifecycle novice poses operational and organizational challenges. I contend that such a firm could benefit from transferring technical work away from existing Litigation Support staff. Senior persons are able to concentrate upon advanced issues, such as qualifying vendors, project management and consulting with the legal team, while the novice recruit learns to do everything else. Some firms have already hired full time electronic discovery technicians in an effort to save cost by moving services inside to the firm. As each technician has a time entry number, the next question is whether there are at least 1,000 billable hours a year of work, so they can pay for themselves.

Regardless of where the new hire comes from, the future of the Litigation Support professional is very bright. This individual is in a position to evaluate the litigation technology and support at the law firm and improve it. Within the law firms, this position can be one route to management. Within litigious industries where corporations face tremendous ediscovery costs, this position may also find a friendly home.