Litigation support consulting helps lawyers prepare for complex trials by identifying and organizing relevant documents, providing up-to-date legal research, ensuring expert reports are in the correct format, and designing visual evidence. Consultants may have legal or technical expertise.
Litigation support consulting is a service provided to attorneys to help them prepare for complex trials. These trials can involve extremely technical issues and enormous amounts of evidence. Litigation support consultants may be experienced attorneys, while others may have technical expertise in certain areas, such as medicine or forensic accounting procedures. There are also consultants who specialize in providing training to a law firm’s litigation support team or helping companies create an internal litigation support division.
In any case, all litigation support consulting helps lawyers develop, shape, and present a legal theory of a case to a court or jury. The theory of the case is what some trial lawyers like to call “the story of the case.” It is assumed that judges know the law and are able to sift through complicated information, disregarding material irrelevant to the legal issues. In complex cases, it is essential to present an easy-to-follow story, supported by relevant facts, for both the court and jurors.
The first step in preparing for a trial is to identify and organize all relevant documents. Most of these documents were provided in discovery, the process by which each side discloses evidence that can be used at trial. Discovery documents usually consist of electronically stored information (ESI). They are called eDiscovery or eDiscovery. Litigation support consulting involves the use of technologies specifically designed to isolate and catalog relevant legal information in eDiscovery documents.
Legal research is an important aspect of trial preparation. Lawyers must have up-to-date legal knowledge to support arguments in court and prepare jury briefs for judge approval. Case law, particularly involving scientific or technical issues, is constantly modified and added to. New appeal decisions are posted electronically. Litigation Support Consultants help ensure that trial attorneys have the most current law available at the time of trial.
Complex litigation may involve the use of expert witnesses to explain technical language and offer an opinion on the ultimate legal issues in the case. The rules of evidence require experts to prepare written reports for the court and the opposing party. These reports should contain the expert’s qualifications to testify about the issues in the case, their views on those issues, and how those views were reached. Consultants help ensure that expert reports are in the correct legal format and can be clearly understood by the court or jury.
The presentation of trial evidence is a key element of complex litigation. This is particularly true of “demonstrative” evidence such as charts, tables, photographs, and visuals that help explain the legal story. Litigation support consulting involves designing visual evidence intended to summarize key story steps in a concise and dramatic manner. Technical advisors usually set up and operate any audio and video equipment used during the trial so that attorneys can focus on presenting the case.
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