CT Summation : "Litigation Support Boot Camp"
We're a busy little crew here at Video Resources (as evidenced by my long overdue blog-sorry!)
When we're not saving lives and reputations we make it a practice to keep up on as many subjects, programs or products which will have a positive impact on our services.
With the goal of being "all things to all clients" I undertook a three day "Power User" course which explored the complexity and versatility of CT Summation, probably the best litigation support program in the known legal universe (for those who know how to tap into its incredible power).
Although CT summation isn't exactly the first choice to use for trial presentation (it lacks many of the robust features of say, Sanction or Visionary) it is probably the best known litigation program in the legal community. Many of our clients rely heavily on CT Summation and it's imperative in "our world" to know how to adapt, capture and present data, regardless of its native format.
So, with my time at a premium, I jumped at the chance to participate in a three day course taught by Henry Alonso , owner of Alonso Consulting & Training. Henry has over 16 years of hands-on experience working with CT Summation and has several years under his belt providing litigation support to a variety of top level law firms - it was a no-brainer of a decision to learn from Henry and well worth the investment.
The course was a non-stop, hands on adventure that allowed me to perform, in a real-time, legal environment; Henry taught us tricks and shortcuts that even many seasoned users of the program aren't aware of ; after 24 hours of immersion into every aspect of the program I and my fellow "Boot Camp Power Users" came away with a solid understanding of just how powerful the program is. (We got a really cool certificate to boot!)
Two weeks later I discovered just how useful this training would be.....
Most of us who work in this techno-arena don't really blink twice when a new computer appears on the scene, or a new program is intruduced into system; it's just a given - it's what we do.
We've been working on an extended lawsuit for the past two years; we've gone through a couple of law firms along the way so it was no surprise to hear that a law firm we were expecting to work with on the matter suddenly (to us anyway) resigned the case leaving their client flailing about to get new representation.
Now - this is a unique situation for us. We're actually presenting the exhibits for BOTH sides (it was their idea) since we had the equipment and there are something in the neighborhood of 50,000 pages of exhibits that we're presenting using the Visionary program. So, here we are, a few days from trial (no continuance) and no documents to present.
The new counsel came into the scene woefully unprepared. No, that's being too kind; they came into this mess like lambs to the slaughter; they're an "old school" lawfirm - they didn't have much use for these new fangled computers and such. They were in WAY over their heads (that's not an exagerration - I've seen the "deer in the headlights" look - this was the deers carcass, it didn't know it had already been hit).
Well - this tale has a happy ending, sort of... (we're still in trial as I type this and probably will still be through 2009). The former counsel supplied the new firm with a brand spanking new laptop with all the exhibits they were planning on using in their presentation- all contained in a program called..drumroll please.. CT Summation!
I quickly donned my CT Summation Power User cape and rubbed my secret CT Summation Power User decoder ring and, summoning up all my willing brain cells was able to ascertain that there were 500 exhibits totalling 36,000 pages in the program. We converted the pages to work with our Visionary program in record time (well, in enough time to show up at trial ready to go!) and were hailed as miracle workers. Okay.. maybe that's an exagerration; but, everyone WAS REAL HAPPY.
So -long story short - the payoff from the course was having the knowledge to not only know where the files/exhibits were stored in the program but also how to safely extricate them all with meta tags and doc ids, etc intact.
Just another day performing the expected miracle for our clients!
(And another job well-billed!)
