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Information Professional Update
Issue 10, October 2006

  • SPOTLIGHT ON ... 1) CaseSoft® Tools Join LexisNexis® Litigation Services Offering 2) Take a Look at the LexisNexis CaseSoft Toolbox of Case-Analysis Resources
  • ONLINE WITH ...U.S. Firms Can Gain Access to LexisNexis Global Legal Research
  • KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE ...LexisNexis Legal Industry Monitor: The Practitioner’s Resource for Daily News about the Legal Profession
  • FYI FLASH ...1)More State Coverage, Search Flexibility Offered Via LexisNexis® Total Litigator 2) LexisNexis to Retire Some Early CheckCite® Versions 3) Document Profiling a Challenge? LexisNexis Professional Services can Help
  • FOR IPs ONLY ...Last 2006 Web Seminar Covers Top 10 LexisNexis Additions

SPOTLIGHT ON. . . 1) CaseSoft® Tools Join LexisNexis® Litigation Services Offering 2) Take a Look at the LexisNexis CaseSoft Toolbox of Case-Analysis Resources

1) CaseSoft® Tools Join LexisNexis® Litigation Services Offering

Across the nation and around the world—from solo practitioners to the largest law firms, even the U.S. Department of Justice and the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia—legal professionals turn to LexisNexis CaseSoft products to organize and analyze the facts, witnesses, documents and legal issues in case matters.

LexisNexis Group recently added CaseSoft, Ltd. to its family of companies. CaseSoft is the leading provider of litigation fact-management and analysis tools, which includes CaseMap®, its flagship case-analysis tool.

CaseMap will augment LexisNexis® Total Litigator in future developments, giving you one-point access to the vast collection of content, tools and services available from LexisNexis. CaseMap will eventually provide the workflow platform into which all key LexisNexis Total Litigator products will be linked and integrated.

Currently the LexisNexis CaseSoft line of software tools includes:

  • CaseMap—a central repository for critical case knowledge. Organize and link information about key facts, documents, parties and legal issues in every litigation matter.
  • TimeMap®—visual timelines that depict and analyze evidence uncovered at any time during the litigation workflow.
  • TextMap®—a database of electronic transcript files from case depositions, examinations and other proceedings that stand alone or integrate into CaseMap resources.
  • NoteMap®—an efficient way to process key facts from vast numbers of documents typically processed in litigation. Create and edit outlines quickly and effectively.
  • DepPrep®—groom witnesses for their depositions quickly and easily.

2) Take a Look at the LexisNexis CaseSoft Toolbox of Case-Analysis Resources

CaseMap: Powerful Case Analysis … Just Click

CaseMap software is specifically designed to help litigators organize the major components of a case—the facts, the legal issues, the people and businesses involved. CaseMap can be used from day one of a case, through the discovery phase and on to mediation or to trial, helping the litigation team keep track of case information in an organized manner.

Used by 97 of the AmLaw top 100 firms, CaseMap offers special linking features so information can be filtered easily and reports generated for clients and for deposition preparation. For example, quickly identify the facts and case law that support the client’s position on one particular issue. Or filter by specific people to determine their involvement in a case.

Information can be entered directly into CaseMap. Or use the Send to CaseMap feature to cull critical passages directly from documents and transcripts created in a variety of formats. Once your CaseMap spreadsheet is created, it can be sent to TimeMap (see next page) to create timeline visualizations.

There are three main areas within the CaseMap program: Facts, Objects and Issues. Here’s how they work together:

  • Facts:  Build your case chronology and link Facts from the case to documents supporting the Facts and to the legal Issues involved in the case. Enter the text of the Fact and include the names of those directly involved with that Fact. (Later you can filter Facts specific to a person or persons to see how they are involved in the case.) Create links to a file—a PDF, a Microsoft® Word document, a Microsoft Excel® spreadsheet or documents generated via 15+ other litigation support and electronic discovery tools. Linked files will open in the appropriate software, preserving the document’s integrity.
  • Objects:  A key to CaseMap is its use of “Short Names” to link facts with people, places, events and documents. Short Names is a great cross-referencing tool that helps you pinpoint the importance of a document, person or place in your case. Define the persons, places, events and other Objects that may be included in the Facts area. Enter the Full Name of the Object; CaseMap also suggests a Short Name. (For example, you could enter a document description in the Full Name field, then use the document’s Bates Number as the Short Name so it will be unique to that document.)  Whenever that Short Name is used anywhere in CaseMap, it will create a link between that Object and the Fact.
  • Issues:  Define the legal issues (and sub-issues of the case) and monitor on an ongoing basis. Once Issues are defined, then they can be entered within the Facts in order to create links between a Fact and an Issue. The Facts area also gives you the option to Evaluate a Fact—either good or bad for your case—vital information as the litigation team determines if the case should settle or move to trial.

CaseMap also generates polished work product. Easily create a report of any CaseMap spreadsheet. A title page is added automatically. And the built-in CaseMap PDF writer simplifies the PDF report process. Or create an entire CaseMap ReportBook of case analysis reports that includes a table of contents and confidentiality statement.

TimeMap: Create Visual Timelines

Timing is everything. And TimeMap makes it easy to transform vital case information into easy-to-analyze timelines. You supply the facts, and TimeMap does the rest. Or use your pre-generated sets of facts from your CaseMap case-analysis program.

In minutes, litigators can generate a professional-looking timeline to scale that can be manipulated with different colors, fonts and layout features. No graphic expertise needed. Create timeline visuals perfect for exhibits at mediation and trial, or employ the practical graphs in any communication task—at meetings with clients, at hearings, at depositions, in briefs, etc.—while keeping production costs at pennies.

TimeMap users can choose from more than 30 standard timeline templates that include various flag styles, title styles, background colors and more. Then, simply enter the dates, times (down to the second, if you wish) and descriptions of events. TimeMap creates fact flags for your entries, generates a time scale based on fact dates and positions the fact flags at the appropriate dates along the time scale. Or, send facts organized in CaseMap to TimeMap with one click of the mouse and create a timeline visual that can include pictures and links to important documents.

Plus TimeMap flexibility offers:

  • Easy importing from Microsoft Excel and dozens of other programs.
  • Powerful Send-to-Microsoft PowerPoint® options that allow you to quickly develop slide shows with separate slides for each fact in the timeline.
  • A built-in PDF writer for generating PDFs of timeline graphs. (A full Adobe Acrobat® license not required.)
  • Easy cut-and-paste so TimeMap graphs can be added directly into word-processing documents.

TextMap: Analyze Electronic Transcripts Effectively

TextMap offers powerful cross-transcript searching, condensed transcript printing, and a built-in PDF writer. When the litigation team uses CaseMap and TextMap together, it improves the organization of the case file and eliminates the need for deposition summaries in a word processor. TextMap is also intuitive enough for litigators working with electronic transcripts for the first time.

Just upload the electronic transcript into TextMap and the litigation team can summarize, annotate and attach notes regarding testimony. Portions of testimony can be selected and sent directly to CaseMap so that selection is included in the Facts area with a link to that portion of the transcript. And trial team members can work together in a case’s TextMap transcript database—all searching, culling facts and creating reports at the same time, even during travel, thanks to the easy-to-use replication and synchronization features.

Plus TextMap offers:

  • Cross-transcript searching that lets you locate and view all references to a word or phrase across all case transcripts.
  • Transcript indexing. Each transcript word is indexed and added to a dictionary that summarizes all terms appearing in all case transcripts. The dictionary of transcript terms appears at the right side of the TextMap window. Next to each word is the number of times it was used in all transcripts and under each word is a “hits” list of the specific transcripts, pages and lines where the word appears.
  • Tight integration with CaseMap case analysis. TextMap makes it easy to cull passages from transcripts and organize them in the CaseMap key fact chronology. 
  • A built-in PDF Writer. Rather than just printing your transcript-related reports, create PDFs. There’s even a Print to PDF and Email option that creates a PDF and attaches it to e-mail.
  • Flexible transcript importing functionality that handles electronic transcripts in many different formats, e.g., electronic transcripts with any number of lines per page and with or without headers and footers.

NoteMap: Create, Edit and Use Outlines

NoteMap is an outlining tool, great for brainstorming and organizing thoughts in preparation for depositions, hearings, etc. It’s easy to use, with features that include:

  • Live spell checking and many keyboard shortcuts that simplify editing and using;
  • Note sorting;
  • The ability to link outline notes to external files such as images;
  • Exporting outlines to Microsoft Word or WordPerfect® with just one click. Or export to PowerPoint® or Corel® as the basis of a presentation. (NoteMap also makes it easy to outline from WordPerfect, Word and defunct outliners like ECCO.)

DepPrep: Help Clients Prepare for Depositions

DepPrep is an electronic tutorial that explains the purpose and process of depositions and offers very useful information and tips for the witness—everything from deponent demeanor to how to answer a question.

While it does not eliminate the interaction between witness and counsel as deposition approaches, DepPrep enhances the time counsel spends with a witness, allowing them to focus on critical issues instead of dealing with perfunctory points.

 


ONLINE WITH. . . .U.S. Firms Can Gain Access to
LexisNexis Global Legal Research

Now U.S. offices of U.S. law firms can gain access to the same comprehensive worldwide (non-U.S.) legal resources that are available to overseas LexisNexis customers via their individual country platforms.

New LexisNexis® Global Legal Research is a major content expansion offering U.S. lexis.com® subscribers access to more than 1,000 international legal sources from Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom—including more than 800 sources not currently available via www.lexis.com!  

For example, in addition to important federal and state law reports, legislation, journals, newsletters and bulletins, discover:

  • Commentary: Exclusive legal encyclopedia and treatises such as Halsbury’s Laws of England; Butterworths Corporate Law Service; Erman: Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (Erman on the German Civil Code).
  • Forms & Precedents: Exclusive form books such as Atkins Court Forms (U.K.) and Australian Encyclopedia of Forms & Precedents.
  • Citators: Including QuickCite™ Citator (Canada); Halsbury’s “Is It In Force” (U.K.); and Status Compendium (N.Z.).
  • Reference Materials: Many new reference materials including Practice and Procedure (Australia ) and LexisNexis Rechtswörterbuch (German law dictionary).
  • Additional Primary Law Resources: German and EU case law, legislation, journals; Australian and New Zealand legislation.
  • Exclusive Tax Sources: Simons Direct Tax Service and more than 30 Tolley’s tax publications.
  • Local Content: Including decisions from 99 Canadian Boards and Tribunals, plus Anthony and Berrymans Magistrate’s Court Guide(U.K.).
  • Linking: Certain encyclopedia and law reports will contain links to legislation, case law and other sources.

Users will be able to gain access to the new content via several links made available right from the lexis.com screen. Plus the firm retains consolidated billing under one invoice. However, LexisNexis Global Legal Research is a separate platform, part of the LexisNexis Rosetta Global Platform. U.S. customers gaining access to these materials will be taken outside the lexis.com platform. (There are some minor searching differences. Your LexisNexis account representative can review them with you.)   

In addition to the content available through LexisNexis Global Legal Research, LexisNexis offers an extensive collection of treaties, regional and country laws, reported and unreported court decisions, agency decisions & administrative materials, journals, treatises, tax, trade and admiralty sources, news, company and business sources on lexis.com, including:

  • Case law from 14 countries
  • Legislation from 9 countries
  • International treatises and analysis
  • Law and business directories; dictionaries
  • More than 200 international journals and law reviews
  • More than 7,000 full-text international news & business sources, including leading national, regional and local news and business sources in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, German and Italian.

 


KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE. . .LexisNexis Legal Industry Monitor: The Practitioner’s Resource for Daily News about the Legal Profession

By Linda Hutchinson, LexisNexis Senior Librarian Relations Consultant

Helping attorneys stay current on the news that impacts the legal industry can prove critical to their success. The new LexisNexis Legal Industry Monitor provides legal practitioners with timely, consolidated news headlines about the legal profession, ranging from emerging issues to cutting-edge litigation.

Select a link; move to the full-text article. (Mealey Publications™ links will take users to news brief abstracts.)

This daily electronic newsletter consolidates many important updates into one source via LexisNexis® Total Alerts powered by Ozmosys. At a glance, review news from top sources, including:

  • Mealey’s™ News Briefs—Abstracts on emerging litigation from Mealey’s expert legal journalism team.
  • Legal News Podcasts—Daily headlines and articles on breaking legal news that you can upload into your iPod®.
  • WSJ.com Law Blog—Legal news from The Wall Street Journal®, the nation’s foremost business publication.
  • Web articles covering news from the nation’s top 100 law firms.
  • News from selected LexisNexis sources covering client development, attorney’s fees, law firms and more.
  • Web articles from key legal publications, Web sites and the American Bar Association.
  • Martindale-Hubbell® Legal Articles—insight and analysis on emerging issues written by some of the nation’s top attorneys.

Note that the LexisNexis Legal Industry Monitor offers navigational links on the right side. These links are organized by category, such as media type, topic, top firms, and city. Just click on a link and jump immediately to the relevant section.

The LexisNexis Legal Industry Monitor is available without additional charge, as part of your subscription to the LexisNexis services. Only individuals who subscribe to an online menu through either lexis.com or nexis.com® are eligible to receive the newsletter.

Here’s How to Register for LexisNexis Legal Industry Monitor:

  1. Complete the registration form at www.lexisnexis.com/legalmonitor
    You will need to know your LexisNexis ID to complete the registration form.
  2. You and your attorneys must register for the newsletter on an individual basis. Firm-wide registration is not available.
  3. You will begin receiving the newsletter within five business days of submitting your request.

FYI Flash...1)More State Coverage, Search Flexibility Offered Via LexisNexis® Total Litigator 2) LexisNexis to Retire Some Early CheckCite® Versions 3) Document Profiling a Challenge? LexisNexis Professional Services can Help

1)More State Coverage, Search Flexibility Offered Via LexisNexis® Total Litigator

LexisNexis Total Litigator is designed around the workflow litigators typically follow during the course of litigation. Identify the tasks you want to accomplish, and LexisNexis Total Litigator will present the sources (as well as the products and services) available to complete the task.

Now LexisNexis Total Litigator has more to offers litigators—more resources and more user-friendly functionality. Users can find:

More State Coverage
LexisNexis Total Litigator users now have access to resources from 23 states as well as federal jurisdictions, including these new additions—Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington.

More Practice Area Content
Implement best practices in emerging practice areas that may be important to your firm’s business. Now turn to Antitrust, Real Estate/Construction Law and Commercial Litigation materials, in addition to the practice-area resources now available from more than 20 other legal specialties. 

eDiscovery Integration
The industry’s leading eDiscovery solution (Applied Discovery®) is now available through the LexisNexis Total Litigator’s Plan & Conduct Discovery tab. Connect seamlessly to your ADI Web site right through LexisNexisTotal Litigator, making it a true “one-stop shop” that leverages the best resources to plan and conduct discovery.

Enhanced Drafting Functionality
Find more briefs, pleadings and motions relevant to litigators, and now, jury instructions. Plus search Matthew Bender® forms, analytic guidance and checklists with briefs/pleadings/motions—simultaneously. LexisNexis Total Litigator also combines service of process and electronic filing with these resources to support litigators’ drafting activities.

Enhanced Factual Discovery and Legal Research Functionality
LexisNexis Total Litigator offers the most comprehensive approach to factual discovery,  more than other major online providers—15 additional years of court records, 9,000 additional news and business sources and 1.8 billion additional public records.

And now, to make factual discovery more efficient, LexisNexis Total Litigator users can select search options specifically for Judges/Attorneys/Experts/Arbitrators/Litigants right from the Gather Intelligence tab.

Plus, under the Legal Research tab, now search General and Legal News by practice area—more than eight to choose from. And gain access to Shepard’s® Citations Service. Just click the Shepard’s tab, enter a citation and click SEARCH.

 

2) LexisNexis to Retire Some Early CheckCite® Versions

If your organization uses LexisNexis CheckCite software for cite validation, please note: as of January 31, 2007, all versions of LexisNexis CheckCite software issued prior to Version 8.4 will be retired. LexisNexis will continue to support the latest LexisNexis CheckCite software versions 8.4 and above, through mid 2007.

CheckCite users can get a free upgrade to Shepard’s® CheckCite, a component of Shepard’s® Brief Suite™, which offers more functionality and more easy-to-use features than its early software predecessors. For example, when you view the new Shepard’s CheckCite, you’ll notice:

  • More options for editing cite lists. For example, find a button to delete all invalid cites at once and an Advanced button for creating, deleting and modifying options sets.
  • Dictionary upgrades can be downloaded at the click of a button—and at your convenience (not when the new CD arrives).
  • Linking capability that moves you directly from the CheckCite report to a cite’s full text or to its full-text Shepard’s report.
  • Expanded Quote Viewer so you see more context as you attach quotes.
    To learn more Shepard’s Brief Suite components and to download, go to www.lexisnexis.com/shepards/briefsuite/  

3) Document Profiling a Challenge? LexisNexis Professional Services can Help

It’s a simple concept. Profile work product correctly within your document management system (DMS), and it helps to drive overall business efficiency and effectiveness. Improperly profiled, this same work product is out of reach and can even make the firm DMS system a technological liability.

As information professionals, you realize, however, that this simple concept can be difficult to implement and manage. Now you have additional support on your side.

LexisNexis® Document Profiling can help your organization realize the full potential of its DMS. A consultative service with more than 30 years of experience in the legal information and technology industry, LexisNexis Document Profiling can now deliver precise, consistent documentprofiling information (metadata) that can help your organization maximize the ROI of the DMS.

How? Through increased productivity levels from efficient use—and reuse—of work product. Plus eliminate costly duplication of efforts. Share best practices and intellectual assets more effectively. And decrease DMS administrative time and costs.

If your organization is undergoing a complex business transaction, document profiling can also make the transition more efficient. LexisNexis Document Profiling can also help your organization address a broad range of situations:

  • Mergers and acquisitions or corporate splits      
  • Duplicate version/draft detection                          
  • DMS migration
  • Document Security
  • Best practices library design

Document Profiling is a natural fit with LexisNexis® Total Search, the tool that helps your patrons uncover on-point documents in the organization’s internal-document collection as easily as you search the vast LexisNexis collection at www.lexis.com (LexisNexis Total Search was featured in last month’s LexisNexis Information Professional Update.)

Find out more about Document Profiling from LexisNexis Professional Services by contacting the LexisNexis Professional Services team via email at Professional.Services@lexisnexis.com


FOR IPs ONLY ... Last 2006 Web Seminar Covers Top 10 LexisNexis Additions

Which 2006 LexisNexis addition leads your list of Top Ten Favorites? LexisNexis® Total Litigator? Historical stock quotes added to www.lexis.com? How about The Wall Street Journal Online in Association with LexisNexis®? Maybe the latest Disaster Recovery tools were most important to your organization.

Join Julie Webster-Matthews, LexisNexis Librarian Relations Consultant, as she reviews the Top Ten list from the LexisNexis Librarian Relations Group.

LexisNexis Year in Review: A Top Ten Countdown will be ready for you November 16. It’s the latest in the LexisNexis Librarian Web Seminar series. Seminars are released in March, June, September and November—always on the third Thursday of the month. This year’s available Web seminars include:

  • Client Development: Show Them What You Know! (available since March)
  • Reduce Your Organization’s Risk: Strategies for Surviving a Disaster (available since June)
  • LexisNexis® Total Litigator - Creating a Strategic Advantage for Your Firm’s Litigators (available since September)

Once posted, the seminars will be available for you to access at any time (as many times as you’d like) throughout 2006. And they’re FREE to LexisNexis subscribers!

To register, go to www.lexisnexis.com/webseminars  Simply fill out the registration form and choose the dates and topics of the Web seminar(s) you wish to access. It’s that easy!

After registering, you’ll receive confirmation, and the day before the seminar releases, you’ll receive a reminder e-mail containing the URL you’ll need to gain access to the seminar and any accompanying materials.


LexisNexis™ Information Professional Update
Be a LexisNexis Information Professional Update E-List Subscriber!
Subscribe here.

LexisNexis Information Professional Update is a monthly newsletter (November/December issues combined) for law-firm, law-school, corporate, and government information professionals published by
LexisNexis, P.O. Box 933, Dayton, OH 45401-0933.

Managing Editor
Barbara M. Byrd
barbara.byrd@lexisnexis.com

Contributors
Peter Adams, Beverly Burns, Kara Cox,
Lorraine Gongla-Coppinger, Jayne Nash,
Carol Sandy

Legal Liaison
Shari Townsend

For comments or questions regarding legal products, contact:
Cindy Spohr, MLS
Senior Director, Librarian Relations Group
cindy.spohr@lexisnexis.com

LexisNexis, lexis.com, Shepard’s, Martindale-Hubbell, CheckCite and the Knowledge Burst logo are registered trademarks, and Shepard’s Signal is a trademark of Reed Elsevier Properties Inc., used under license. BriefCheck and BriefSuite are trademarks of LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. CounselLink is a trademark of LexisNexis Examen, Inc. CourtLink is a registered trademark of LexisNexis CourtLink, Inc. Applied Discovery is a registered trademark Applied Discovery, Inc. Other products or services may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. © 2006 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier.
All Rights Reserved. LB2006-10 0906

 

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