Summarizing a Deposition - Skills & Tools

Someone has rightly said, “Deposition is the core part of litigation”. An attorney heavily relies upon the testimony of the witnesses in order to prove the claim of the client and to demolish the claim of the opponent. The purpose of the testimony is to yield the truth. It helps in bringing out the actual veracity from the witnesses. The fate of the trial to a greater extent depends upon the depositions. Testimony is a technique to tacitly elucidate the correct version from a witness. Attorneys put across the questions to the witness so as to bring them to their desired statement in very scattered manners. This makes the deposition a lengthy affair.

As the depositions go to the root of the trial, it entails the demarcation of relevant part out of the deposition which further requires to be summarized. The correct summarization of deposition depends upon two vital factors:

1. Legal acumen
2. Ability to summarize

Each trial has its peculiar set of facts which mandate its course of trial. The testimony is expected to revolve around the issues involved in it. In absence of a legal acumen, the vital points of testimony are at risk of being missed. The selection of relevant text out of the deposition can be done only by a qualified attorney. Anyone other than an attorney / paralegal would be unable to actually understand and identify the required portion in the testimony to support the defense or otherwise. So the role of a person with legal acumen becomes vital in highlighting the selected portion. The legal acumen in summarization deposition requires the following skills:

• Ability to identify the key points involved in the testimony in hand.
• Skill to comprehend the legal issues lightly to be supported or demolished by the witness.
• Selection of the key points including the supported / non-supported version by the witness.

Summarization produces a comprehensive and organized portion of testimony. It requires the real understanding of the highlighted portions by joining them with relevant connectors or other words. Good comprehension along with grammatical and analytical skills plays a vital role in conveying the same sense but in a more concise and articulate manner.      

“Everything must have a beginning”

Profits of the firms are going down whereas expenses are increasing with every passing day. Clients are becoming more demanding and the competition is getting intense like never before.

This has been a common scenario in the UK legal industry and it’s making it tough for the law firms especially small and mid size firms. There has been uncertainty, turmoil and a lot of speculations about the best way out under current circumstances.

Whenever there are talks about increasing profits, reducing inefficiencies and creating value for the clients, outsourcing is bound to draw a lot of attention towards it. All of a sudden, you’ll see reports coming out in number talking about outsourcing, forecasting its future, talking about its pitfalls etc.

You just cannot ignore the never ending debate on the issues like ethics, confidentiality, loss of control, patriotism and so on. But amidst all this, it’s the firms or organisations that are suffering as they are unable to decide whether they should go for it wholeheartedly.

Despite of so many examples of successful outsourcing, they always remain in doubt and even though they feel that this could be a way out for them, they remain cautious about it.

If you’re one of those firms or practises that want to consider outsourcing but are not able to decide, don’t just wait, call us for a free consultation with your queries, we’ll be happy to work this out for you.

Let’s work this out!!!

LPO: Serving the Clients Needs

The practice of law is changing at an exponential pace and clients no longer accept automatic increases in billing rates and escalating costs without questioning. To retain existing clients and gain new ones, firms need to offer unique cost saving alternatives. One such alternative is to have best in quality, more routine legal work performed by fully licensed Indian lawyers charging few dollars per hour, in contrast to the hundreds of dollars typically charged by law firms for their associates and paralegals. Because the Indian lawyers are working in a time zone almost 12 hours away, USA’s “down time” is India’s “up time” and the work essentially continues around the clock. As a result, clients often get real results the next working day. The most commonly offered services have been document review, legal research and writing, legal transcription, drafting of pleadings and briefs and patent services.

Legal outsourcing allows both a law firm and a corporate in- house legal department to have their respective staffs focus on the core value work for which intimate knowledge of the client, its business, and the nuances of the legal specialty are required. Outsourcing not only better serves the needs of the client, but it also makes the practice of law more interesting. The legal process outsourcing in India has been growing at a faster pace and with higher growth rate and has been in a great progression during these many years. According to one of the latest surveys, at present, there are more than 15,000 professionals employed in various LPOs across India.

The growth rate of the LPO industry in India is quite faster in comparison to the other countries. Now, everyone at the management level is looking to invest significantly in the systems, security and process to ensure the most important aspect of running this business which is - Data Security and Confidentiality. Providing business confidentiality is the key consideration of any outsourcing firm’s security measures to build a strong and trustworthy relationship with the clients. The LPOs which had started with 4-10 professionals a year back have now grown to a large strength of 400. LPO industry is also passing through the same phase as like the BPOs which had multiplied significantly in  the recent past. The future of LPO can be visualized with the glance on the following facts:

• Jobs in the field are likely to increase to 79,000 by 2015. (Source Forrester incorporation).
• “LPO service providers in India likely to generate revenue of US dollar 960 million 2015-2016 (Source Evalueserve).”
• “A USA based technology and Market Research Company indicates the current value of legal outsourcing is $80m (£40m) [about 3% of the estimated market] (Source Forrester incorporation).”
• “A US based technology and Market Research Company indicates the current value of legal outsourcing is $60 m more than (£30 m) in India alone (Source Forrester incorporation).”

In light of Draft n Craft’s history of managing legal data for law firms and corporations, we are very sensitive to the issues of data security and client confidentiality, regardless of the actual content of that data. Draft n Craft treats client data with careful regard for the client’s confidentiality needs and concerns. The company has implemented comprehensive security measures to ensure that client data is not accessed by unauthorized personnel, and that data which is accessed is only utilized to the extent permitted by the scope of our undertaking with the client. Contact Us

Do you really know what’s hurting your practice

If you’re among the 100’s of law practices who want to outsource in order to control their legal expenses but are not able to figure-out what to outsource, here’s a tip that might be of help to you.

This is exactly where law firms need to work upon if they want to use outsourcing to the best of their advantage. Some tips that can help you identify what can be outsourced are:         

•  Differentiate between core and non-core activities.    
• Try and find out the processes which are less productive, monotonous in nature.
• Evaluate the opportunity cost of your time spent on each process.
• Evaluate the number of man hours spent on each process.
• Set the objectives that you need to achieve from outsourcing.
• Consult with vendor for any suggestions from his side.
• Select the process which you need to outsource.

I’m sure you’ll agree that any firm considering outsourcing is actually willing to accept and implement change in its procedures, service delivery or any other functional area to be able to survive in this competitive environment. 

The process of change starts from identifying what is the function that actually needs to be changed followed by the rest. No matter how well the objective or the end result of the change is being defined but unless you know what is it that you need to work upon, pitfalls are inevitable.

At last, I just want to say it’s high time that the firms start considering re-structuring or innovative ways to steer themselves out of the hardship that they are into at present.

“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein 

The Steeple Chase Race for Law Firms

We have been talking about the ABS and its effects on to the legal industry at large for some time now.  However, the actual race full of obstacles which the law firms today need to run at is less talked about.  What to do, how to do and when to do is the top thought of the day.

The most affected from this are the private client practice law firms.  This means that law firms dealing with wills & estates, conveyancing, immigration, Family laws etc get to feel the brunt of this maximum.

We need to understand the ABS has three sides – the good, bad and the ugly. 

The Good – The Law Society of England & Wales has always been in favor of promoting open market, choice and competition in the legal market and the alternative business structure just makes that more stronger as the ABS comes as one of the most suited models for the future legal services market.  Let’s also acknowledge the fact that the budding lawyers will have more choices in terms of their careers.

The Bad – the ownership of legal services, which was so far restricted to lawyers, has now changed and now it’s open to one and all. 

The Ugly – the law firms which were anyways surviving the ever existing competition successfully are managing their ways out with this radical change and will continue to do so.  It is the smaller and mid size firms who are feeling the impact of this change.  While one cannot replace a solicitor’s advice to that off a non-solicitor, the commoditised legal services like conveyancing, wills & estates etc can be easily and are being taken over by the new Tesco’s and ASDAs in town.

The downside of ABSs creating new opportunities in to the market in terms of jobs is that non lawyers will also enjoy the same or similar benefits as a lawyer in some cases.

The Management of a law firms now needs to be on their toes to do some effective business planning. Solicitors need to wear many hats at the same time in order to beat this change.  In no way can we say that the traditional ways of practice are bad but we surely need to make modifications in the ways of practice looking in to the changing trends. It is very truly said, that "If you are not riding the waves of change – you’ll find yourself beneath them."