Deciding to operate your law firm in the Mac environment is no longer a lonely decision. Just a few years ago, only a few law firms were building their legal practices on the back of a Mac Operating System or engaged in the heavy use of services, applications and devices, including the iPad™, iPhone® and iPod®. Lawyers using Mac’s were left without many options when it came time to litigation support tools and finding consultants with both legal and extensive Mac experience.
As more legal applications have been written in this environment and users become more demanding, the need to create and understand eDiscovery options has risen as well. There are only a small number of litigation support firms that recognized this trend early on and have created strong niche markets in supporting clients with Mac’s.
It is unlikely that you will find a single firm with all the in house resources necessary to supply all your litigation support needs in the Mac environment. The market is still small enough that firms tend to specialize in different areas of Mac support such as hosting and review options or data recovery or asset management. The key to developing a unified litigation plan for the Mac environment is to engage an experienced consultant to lead the process, create an overall discovery plan and quickly assemble a team of experts with the relevant experience in the areas required by your litigation.
Hosting & Document Review – A Unique Situation
In the past, document hosting and review has posed a unique issue for firms in the Mac environment. There were no applications available on the market to respond to this need. Studeo Legal has one of the only online system that runs in a Mac OS environment that works with IE, Safari and Firefox. It is a full hosting and document review system that allows the end users to connect using their existing equipment. In addition, there are other specialty Mac eDiscovery products on the market to help you build medical/fact chronologies, review multiple forms of electronic information such as PDF files and deposition transcripts. There is no need to go outside your comfort zone while engaging in the eDiscovery process. An analysis of your litigation needs will determine which solutions in the marketplace are the most effective for you.
Data Recovery
There are now dedicated services that offer data recovery solutions for Apple customers with Mac, iPod® and iPhone® devices. This includes data recovery for Mac systems, servers, applications and devices. Because of their unique characteristics, experience in PC data recovery does not immediately translate into the Mac environment which requires dedicated expertise.
Digital Asset Management
A growing portion of eDiscovery populations is digital in nature, going well beyond digital copies of word documents. Whether your litigation includes millions of emails, photos, audio files (voicemails, wiretaps, or depositions) or multi-media files (such as QuickTime™, MP3, WAV, AVI) the amount of information to categorize and review is growing ever larger. Digital asset management allows the user to find information with pin point accuracy, with the same speed and search functions as used in searching text, without first transcribing the files! Users can search through the spoken work in a soundtrack, using speech-to-text technology to index the soundtrack against the time code and locate your information. Mac users now have a solution available for Asset Management applications.
Every case and firm is different and requires unique solutions, especially when consulting in the Mac OS environment. Make sure that your litigation support consultant can augment their experience by partnering with other Mac consultants with particular areas of expertise. There is a small network of Mac consultants that can assure you that the best resources will be dedicated to your project and led by an experienced consultant. Be sure to contact one today.
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