TPA is an affiliate of the National Association of Legal Assistants INSIDE THIS ISSUE: ♦ President’s Message ♦ Career Corner ♦ Paralegal Charged with Embezzlement – Chris Whaley ♦ Think Prepare Achieve – Upcoming Spring Seminar ♦ Fall Board Meeting ♦ Simplifying Your E-Discovery Work Load – Michelle Kovich ♦ Annual Membership Meeting ♦ Winter 2007 Special Report First Vice President ♦ TPA History: NALA ♦ NALA Campus Live! ♦ Congratulations New CLA’s! ♦ 2008 CLA/CP Certification Exams & NALA Short Course ♦ Supporting Sustaining Members ♦ Chapter Information & News ♦Publications Message ♦ 2008 TPA Officer & Board Members Tennessee Paralegal Association Post Office Box 21723 Chattanooga, TN 37424 http://www.tnparalegal.org PUBLICATION OF THE TENNESSEE PARALEGAL ASSOCIATION January 2008 President’s Message Dear Fellow TPA members: It is hard to believe that my term as President is over. It has been an exciting and rewarding two years for me and I want to take this opportunity to say thanks to all who pitched in and helped turbo-charge TPA--taking it into its second quarter century of existence with a bang! Special thanks to all of the board members who helped spearhead the rejuvenation of TPA. We have a great new board in place (with some of the same faces and some new ones). The new Board, elected at our Annual Meeting in November, is already hard at work planning and working to make our association even stronger. Let me introduce them: Our 2008 President, Tracey Williams (East Chapter), did a phenomenal job for the past two years as First Vice President, as evidenced by the great Fall Seminars we had. Tracey has set the bar high for future seminar planners – not only putting together seminars with great speakers, but making record profits for our association in the process. Tracey got her feet wet before her term even started—filling in for me at the Annual Meeting and Seminar while I was in the midst of trial preparation in Ohio. I am confident our new First Vice President, Tammy Bradford (West Chapter), will also meet the task. Tammy has already booked the hotel and secured our contract for next year’s Annual Meeting and Seminar, so please plan to be with us at the Hilton Suites in Brentwood on November 7 and 8, 2008. I know Tammy will put together an awesome seminar, as she has done for the West Chapter in the past. Louise Mulderink (Southeast Chapter) will be serving her second term as Second Vice President, in charge of membership. Louise will be sending out renewal notifications soon, so be watching for those via email. The Board voted last year to begin sending our membership directories, updated bylaws and other membership information via email (so we have searchable documents). Watch for those in your email too. Louise is also putting together a committee to help host a reception in Nashville in an effort to form a new chapter in Middle Tennessee. Please contact her if you would like to assist with that committee. Phyllis Carter (Southeast Chapter), our faithful Treasurer, will continue in that role again. We honestly could not keep TPA running smoothly without her. WINTER 2007 / 2008 Volume 25 Number 4
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Transcript
TPA is an
affiliate of the
National Association
of Legal Assistants
INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
♦ President’s Message
♦ Career Corner
♦ Paralegal Charged with
Embezzlement – Chris Whaley
♦ Think Prepare Achieve –
Upcoming Spring Seminar
♦ Fall Board Meeting
♦ Simplifying Your E-Discovery
Work Load – Michelle Kovich
♦ Annual Membership Meeting
♦ Winter 2007 Special Report
First Vice President
♦ TPA History: NALA
♦ NALA Campus Live!
♦ Congratulations New CLA’s!
♦ 2008 CLA/CP Certification
Exams & NALA Short Course
♦ Supporting Sustaining Members
♦ Chapter Information & News
♦Publications Message
♦ 2008 TPA Officer & Board
Members
Tennessee Paralegal Association
Post Office Box 21723
Chattanooga, TN 37424
http://www.tnparalegal.org
PUBLICATION OF THE TENNESSEE PARALEGAL ASSOCIATION
January 2008
President’s Message Dear Fellow TPA members:
It is hard to believe that my term as President is over. It has been an exciting
and rewarding two years for me and I want to take this opportunity to say
thanks to all who pitched in and helped turbo-charge TPA--taking it into its
second quarter century of existence with a bang! Special thanks to all of the
board members who helped spearhead the rejuvenation of TPA. We have a
great new board in place (with some of the same faces and some new ones).
The new Board, elected at our Annual Meeting in November, is already hard
at work planning and working to make our association even stronger. Let
me introduce them:
Our 2008 President, Tracey Williams (East Chapter), did a phenomenal
job for the past two years as First Vice President, as evidenced by the great
Fall Seminars we had. Tracey has set the bar high for future seminar
planners – not only putting together seminars with great speakers, but
making record profits for our association in the process. Tracey got her feet
wet before her term even started—filling in for me at the Annual Meeting
and Seminar while I was in the midst of trial preparation in Ohio.
I am confident our new First Vice President, Tammy Bradford (West
Chapter), will also meet the task. Tammy has already booked the hotel and
secured our contract for next year’s Annual Meeting and Seminar, so please
plan to be with us at the Hilton Suites in Brentwood on November 7 and
8, 2008. I know Tammy will put together an awesome seminar, as she has
done for the West Chapter in the past.
Louise Mulderink (Southeast Chapter) will be serving her second term as
Second Vice President, in charge of membership. Louise will be sending out
renewal notifications soon, so be watching for those via email. The Board
voted last year to begin sending our membership directories, updated bylaws
and other membership information via email (so we have searchable
documents). Watch for those in your email too. Louise is also putting
together a committee to help host a reception in Nashville in an effort to
form a new chapter in Middle Tennessee. Please contact her if you would
like to assist with that committee.
Phyllis Carter (Southeast Chapter), our faithful Treasurer, will continue in
that role again. We honestly could not keep TPA running smoothly without
I don’t remember signing up for all of this e-discovery when I decided to enter the legal industry and support attorneys with litigation. In fact, for some of us, even moving from an electronic typewriter over to a desktop computer with Word Perfect was a huge transition. Most of the attorneys are still kicking and screaming, but the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have mandated that documents stored electronically are in fact discoverable, (“ESI”). It has always been our role to manage the discovery, find a document in a moment’s notice and track what has been produced and collected during discovery. Consequently, in order to represent our clients well, we must now understand electronic discovery. But don’t worry, we will keep it simple and start by providing you with four things to consider with your ESI workflow.
Keep in mind that while a PDF file produced on a CD is an electronic file, typically electronic discovery pertains to a file that is still in its native file format, i.e., Word, Outlook, Excel. There are really four phases to consider with a case involving ESI which include Collection, Processing, Review and Production.
Collecting the data varies as well as the types of media to collect data from. Simply copying the data from one computer to a CD can be performed with standard tools such as Windows Explorer. The computer system maintains properties about a file such as the date and time it was created, modified or last accessed which are all referred to as metadata. These properties are modified when the file is copied. For example, if a Word document was copied from a computer over to a CD, the creation date would be altered instead representing the date the file was copied. This is one of many things to consider when asking the client to copy files from servers, hard drives, flash drives or any type of media. Depending on the needs of your case, it may not even matter.
Since collecting e-discovery is such a new technique, many clients collecting data at the request of the litigation team follow a method such as this:
The client notifies the staff of the need to collect e-mail, in boxes, sent items, deleted items, etc.;
The staff locates all responsive e-mails and forwards them to their manager;
The client then forwards them to the attorney or paralegal;
The attorney or paralegal then load them into the database.
The problems with this method are that an electronic chain of custody trail now exists on these files. Each person that forwarded and/or received the item is now part of the thread and will be revealed on each piece of discovery. Identifying the needs of the case and whether or not your case hinges on metadata, can usually identify a method of collection and whether the data can be copied, harvested or imaged. Consider engaging a forensic computer expert to assist you.
Copying: Can be done with standard tools like windows explorer and obtains active data, but will almost always change some metadata like the last access date/time of files;
Data Harvesting: uses special tools to capture active data without changing any of the metadata. This will not retrieve any “deleted” data located in “slack” or “unallocated” space on the drive. When a file on a computer is deleted, the file actually remains on the computer but is tagged as unallocated space. Until the space is used again or becomes “allocated” it is possible to retrieve the file. Imaging: uses special tools to capture an exact bit by bit copy of all data on a drive, which allows you to recover deleted files located in “slack” or “unallocated” space.
Unfortunately, it is still common for litigators to engage in what I refer to as the “backwards method”. They simply print the e-mails not realizing how beneficial the files were while still in their electronic format. To make matters worse, they take it a step further and have the paper scanned turning them back into electronic copies. A GB of data is 75,000 pages. If your client shows up with 70 GB’s of data, how will you manage that? In order to search the data and manage the discovery effectively and efficiently you will require the use of a litigation review tool.
So now the data has been collected . . . “Just get it in there,” have you heard that before? Try to get the attorneys involved in the decision making process in order to leverage the useful information that is provided within the electronic files. Processing is simply a means of extracting the data and bundling it up so that it can be loaded, searched, reviewed and produced in some type of a litigation review tool. For example, Outlook files when exported out of the program provide pieces of metadata that would benefit the litigation team when searching the discovery. They include fields of information such as “TO”, “FROM”, “DATE”, “CC”, “SUBJECT”, etc. These are the descriptive pieces of information that we presently manually review and index when working with paper discovery. The metadata allows the team to search the discovery by criteria and eliminates the task of indexing. For example, I could search for every e-mail “FROM Michelle Kovitch TO John Doe SUBJECT E-discovery Tips” right out of the gates! Processing ESI can be accomplished with an in-house tool or engaging a service bureau.
Take time to envision how it will be helpful to cull up the data as you proceed with your case. Even though the data has already been collected, each piece of information that is captured during the processing stage from the ESI and then put into your deliverable load file will have a fee associated with it. It is important when working with your service bureau to be clear about which pieces of information or descriptive fields to have extracted. Consider whether or not your case really hinges on things like the creation date of a file. If possible, keep it simple and just stick to the fields you have available by default in your review tool such as: TO, FROM, CC, BCC, BODY, DATE SENT, DATE RECEIVED, SUBJECT LINE, APPLICATION. Other things to consider when having the data processed include: deduplication, conversion to images, maintaining the structure between an email and its attachment and date ranges specific to your case.
After the files are loaded into your review tool and the team starts reviewing the discovery, make sure they are very comfortable with searching the database and retrieving documents based on all different types of criteria. Identify ‘buzz words’ early on in the case and make sure they are communicated to all of the reviewers. Keep a log of these terms as they may likely be an exhibit to your motion attempting to assert a “claw back privilege” later in the case.
With respect to production, the “output” (i.e., native files, pdf files, printed blow backs, etc.) should really be considered during the time of the processing as well. Often these decisions can be made during the meet and confer conference. Aside from producing documents, it is also very important to be clear within your request for production exactly how you want documents within your request be produced. In other words, identifying the specific file format of the production set you receive should be part of the case planning session so we can avoid backstrokes and unnecessary expense later.
While these tips, tricks and traps can be incorporated into using any type of litigation review tool, we sell Summation Software, train our clients and support firms with case consulting. In order to meet the requests of our clients we have also published a book on the practical way to use Summation, “Summ it Up”. The reference guide provides you with more detailed tips on ESI and which tools to use throughout the various phases of litigation. We also provide a long list of best practices, cheat sheets and checklists within the book. You can obtain further information regarding our services or a copy of Summ it Up at www.lmtsupport.com or [email protected].
Our great line of speakers for this seminar was Marcia Eason, President of the Tennessee Bar Association for
Ethics; Sherry Wilds, attorney with the Disability Law and Advocacy Center of Tennessee on Education
Law; T. Harold Pinkley, attorney with the law firm of Miller & Martin, PLLC, for Employment Law; Alan
Cates, attorney with the law firm of Husch & Eppenberger, LLC on Probate Law; and David Ringler on
Structured Settlements. We extend our appreciation to each speaker, as they contributed to the exceptional
outcome of our Fall Seminar.
Thank You Very Much!
The Tennessee Paralegal Association History: NALA
In celebration of our 25+ years and as a tribute to our founding members, we printed the “First Five Years” in our 2006 Spring Issue. It was the first portion of our history prepared by founding member, Lawassa Jones. Then in our 2006 Fall Issue the “Commentary” for the next five years (1986 – 1990) was printed; followed by “Chapter Activities (1981 – 1990)” in our 2006 Winter Issue. Lawassa included Chapter Activities, Education, and TPA Officers through the Years for the State and Local Chapters (1981 – 1990) in this “History” she prepared. The Spring/Summer Issue of 2007 included the “Education (1981 – 1984)” section that she wrote, followed by the Fall 2007 Issue including the “”Education (1985 – 1990)” section. Below is the NALA section. Additional sections will follow in future issues to come through The Advocate.
We lost Lawassa to cancer in 1995, but the history she prepared through 1990 will be with us forever. Historian and co-founding member, Susan Westmoreland, has been updating Lawassa’s work to bring us through to 2005 and we will print her updates in future issues.
Our monthly meetings are held the 3rd Thursday of each month at 6:30 p.m. and alternate between Knoxville and Oak Ridge. Please contact Penny Wilson at [email protected] or Nita Gorman at [email protected] for information regarding the meeting location and CLE topic.
Our last meeting was Tuesday, February 12, 2008 at 6:00 p.m. at the Flatiron Grille in Jackson. We discussed our plans for the coming year, as well as starting preparations for our part in the local Law Day Celebration and nominations for the Ernie Gray Paralegal Utilization Award. Meetings are now being held on the 2nd Tuesday of the month.
Our monthly Learn at Lunch meetings are held the 3rd Tuesday of each month at 11:30 a.m. at Murphy's Ale House at 618 Georgia Avenue in Chattanooga. Our speakers provide information on timely topics in the legal field and CLE credit is provided through NALA.
Another year is before us – a time for resolutions – Is this true? Why does it take the “New Year” to make a
resolution? Every day should be a day to make a resolution. It’s already February – should you wait till the next
year to begin a new goal or change for yourself? I have a response to this question I propose – absolutely not.
When you have come to a decision to accomplish a goal – or even consider an idea – you must act then.
Otherwise, it will become one of your many goals and ideas that are set in the procrastination mode that is
inevitable as you face each day with the numerous personal, home and career demands.
Of course, you have to decide whether this resolution has a high priority. If it meets the high priority criteria, you
can find a way to incorporate it into your already busy schedule that is effectively balanced with your lifestyle.
Remember to be realistic in meeting this resolution. Whatever the resolution may be, you can do it. Sometimes it
takes a little bit more time and planning.
A Good Winter Season’s Greetings to You – My above message is an insight that I wish I could remember and
follow every day during the year. It is February, a new year starting to fly by faster than I desire. I always want to
fit everything into my schedule that I want to accomplish. It is an impossible task since I have too many to count.
It is easy to be discouraged and choose only a few that meet the high priority criteria. The never ending saying of
“Get Organized” is not enough, despite the fact that it is a very true statement. I am organized. It is finding the
more effective approach to include – or exclude – new different goals or ideas; and actually stopping to
implement them. It is easier to keep going with the built momentum and “keeping with the program” that is
already in place. Remembering to stop long enough to re-evaluate and find realistic measures to meet all or the
majority of my goals and ideas is a conscious decision that must not forget. It is a daily challenge.
One goal that I have set for me is to obtain my CLA. It has been a goal of mine since 2003. You would think that
I would have already completed all my studying and taken the exam. It has been a long time in moving forward
and taking steps towards this goal. I find it discouraging to have not pursued this goal with more zeal. I have to
remember life has placed other important goals in front of me, which I have pursued and accomplished, and the
small steps I have taken towards preparing for the exam. I share this because I know that I am not the only person
in this situation, to hold myself to the decision to pursue this goal, and pledge to share my ideas for studies,
including generated study notes & outlines. You have already seen one approach in the past few issues of The
Advocate. The crossword puzzles and vocabulary words are chosen from suggested terms to know for the exam.
Creating your own crossword puzzle from selected vocabulary words is one idea that is easy, yet requires a
thought process which reinforces the respective chosen word’s definition.
In future issues you will see a new section on CLA study tips and ideas, topic outline notes, suggested reading,
and other related material regarding study for the CLA exam. Please forward any suggestions, ideas, articles, or
any topics that you want to see in The Advocate. It does not have to be about the CLA exam. This is your
newsletter. We look forward to your feedback, ideas, and suggestions. – Laysha M. McCullaugh
2008 TPA Officers and Board Members (Contact the officers/board members via our website: www.tnparalegal.org)
President: Tracey A. Williams, CBA, Mostoller, Stulberg & Whitfield, Oak Ridge First Vice President: Tammy R. Bradford, Hill Boren PC, Jackson Second Vice President: Louise C. Mulderink, CP, Husch & Eppenberger, LLC, Chattanooga NALA Liaison: Laysha M. McCullaugh, Fleissner, Davis and Johnson, Chattanooga Secretary: Melissa Gerber Ledbetter, Horton, Maddux & Anderson, Chattanooga Treasurer: Phyllis A. Carter, CTFA, SunTrust Bank (Retired), Chattanooga East Region Director: Alisa C. Pruett, Baker McReynolds O’Kane Atkins & Thompson, Knoxville West Region Director: LaFran Plunk, West Tennessee Legal Services, Jackson East TN Chapter Chair: Nita Gorman, London & Amburn, P.C., Knoxville S.E. TN Chapter Chair: Melissa Gerber Ledbetter, Horton, Maddux & Anderson, Chattanooga West TN Chapter Chair: Jennifer Petty, Trenton Historian: Susan Westmoreland, CEBS, Horton, Maddux & Anderson, Chattanooga Publication Chairs: Laysha M. McCullaugh, Fleissner, Davis and Johnson, Chattanooga & Susan E. Veal, Miller & Martin PLLC, Chattanooga
We would appreciate your contribution to The Paralegal Advocate by submitting articles of interest to you to be published. Please note the deadlines for each issue and feel free to provide any information you would like published prior to the deadline. If you would like to have articles published on specific topics in the Advocate, please contact us.
- The Paralegal Advocate Team
THE PARALEGAL ADVOCATE
is published quarterly by the Tennessee Paralegal Association, an affiliate of the National Association of Legal Assistants, Inc. Articles and other information for the newsletter should be sent to the Advocate Team at the below address. Please title subject heading “For TPA Advocate: