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Sean O’Shea: Tips for Paralegals and Litigation Support Professionals – April 2020

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4/1/2020: Relativity and JVM RAM
You can improve the performance of Relativity analytics operations by increasing the amount of RAM available for Java.  The Java heap is the amount of memory allocated to the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

4/2/2020: 32-bit Operating System RAM Limit
Note that if you have a 32-bit operating system, you will be limited to using 4 GB of RAM – and in practice something closer to 3.5 GB of RAM.

4/3/2020: VBA code to unprotect multiple workbooks with the same password
This Excel macro can also change a password to something else.

4/4/2020: S.D. Ala.: PACER Fees Cannot Be Taxed Because Parties Get a Free ‘First Look’
The Southern District of Alabama held that PACER charges should not be taxed because the parties receive a free look at court filings.

4/5/2020: Garner’s Guide to Making Briefs More Persuasive: Tip 4 – Start Your Brief With a Nonlinear Outline
Garner recommends the use of a nonlinear outline – you are not always finished with one concept, before you move onto the next concept.  Use an outline in the form of a whirlybird.

4/6/2020: Highlighting Cells in a Range with Data Different from the Top Row
On the Home tab, go to Find & Select . . .Go to Special to access a column (or row) differences tool.

4/7/2020: Update Windows Group Policy
Gain access to network directories and rights to applications with the command: gpupdate /force

4/8/2020: The Sedona Conference on Questions to Ask Law Firms About Data Security
Law firms should use WFA2 for public wifi.

4/9/2020: E.D. Cal.: Throwing Out Figures for Cost of Data Decryption Conclusory
“]A]lthough Defendant repeatedly throws out figures exceeding three million dollars to create the appearance that the review process will be costly, it is unable to provide any supportable estimate of the number of files that will need to be reviewed or the cost of reviewing a file–which comprise the bases for the exorbitant cost estimate.”

4/10/2020: New York State Notary Public Database
You can confirm a notary’s license is current by searching for their name in this database.

4/11/2020: vba code to count rows in multiple .csv files
It will generate a list of the source files in one column and the total number of rows in each in a second column.

4/12/2020: Garner’s Guide to Making Briefs More Persuasive: Tip 5 – At an early stage, frame your issue statements and point headings
The opening paragraph of a brief should make clear which side the author is on, and clearly state the problem.  Concentrate on the legal issues and how their resolution will affect people.

4/13/2020: All network cables are not the same
Get a CAT 5e or CAT 6 ethernet cable to support speeds of up to 1 Gbps.

4/14/2020:  Use VLOOKUP to find multiple values in an array
If you want to find multiple values in the array for the successive times that the searched for value appears, you can do so with the help of Excel’s COUNTIF formula

4/15/2020: Garner’s Guide to Making Briefs More Persuasive: Tip 6 – Arrange your points from most to least important
Make sure that your brief has a recognizable form – don’t let it begin or end out of nowhere.   The points in a brief should be placed in descending importance in order to increase the chance that the most important points will be read carefully.

4/16/2020: Use Del. C. for statutes when filing in Delaware
The Superior Court of Delaware’s citation guide specifies that this italicized format be used:  14. Del. C. § 101

4/17/2020: dtSearch in Relativity to exclude docs including your search term
Simply follow the search term with:  NOT w/0

. . . and then enter the phrase or phrases you don’t want to appear in the search results.

4/18/2020: Searching for symbols in Relativity
In the Alphabet section of the dtSearch index, below where is says “[Letters] // Original letter, lower case, upper case, unaccented” enter the symbol you want to search for four times preceded by a space each time.

4/19/2020: PowerShell script to count words, lines, and characters in multiple PDF files
The script is a good way to detect near duplicate PDF file

4/20/2020: Searching for symbols in Relativity continued . . .
Characters outside the ASCII code range such as § and £ must be listed by their Unicode value in a dtSearch index or they will not be searchable.

4/21/2020: batch file to get line counts for multiple .csv and .txt files
Put the file in the same folder containing the source files.

4/22/2020: Garner’s Guide to Making Briefs More Persuasive: Tip 7 – Begin and End the Arguments with Points in Your Favor
Swiftly undercut the opposing party’s positions – don’t explain them at great length.

4/23/2020: page counts per GB
Catalyst has much lower counts than other ediscovery service providers.

4/24/2020: windows command to extract data from specific columns in a .csv file
This will work only up to the 31st column in a .csv file.

4/25/2020: Garner’s Guide to Making Briefs More Persuasive: Tip 8 – Write a draft straight through without stopping to edit
Garner recommends writing down a draft un-selfconsciously to the end, and only considering revisions afterwards.

4/26/2020: HHS on the Cloud and HIPAA
HIPAA does not require CSPs to allow customers to audit their security practices.

4/27/2020: powershell script to extract specific columns from a .csv file
This will allow you to extract data beyond the 31st column in a .csv file.

4/28/2020: Court Stats
Get interactive tables on state court data at http://www.courtstatistics.org/

4/29/2020: Excel formula to pull data up to the first delimiter

4/30/2020: Excel formula to pull data between two delimiters in cell with multiple delimiters
=MID(A2,FIND(CHAR(1),SUBSTITUTE(A2,”|”,CHAR(1),4))+1,(FIND(CHAR(1),SUBSTITUTE(A2,”|”,CHAR(1),5))-FIND(CHAR(1),SUBSTITUTE(A2,”|”,CHAR(1),4)))

Enter the relative position of the delimiter in front of the value you want to pull at the end of the first SUBSTITUTE formula; the delimiter which comes after this value at the end of the second SUBSTITUTE formula, and then enter the position of the delimiter in front at the end of the third SUBSTITUTE formula.

Sean O'Shea on Email
Sean O'Shea
Litigation Paralegal
Sean O’Shea began working as a litigation support analyst at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison LLP in 1998, near the dawn of the electronic discovery era. From assisting clients with the implementation of information governance policies, to conducting electronic presentations for attorneys at trials, he has been involved in all aspects of litigation support work. Sean is a Relativity Certified Administrator and an ACEDS Certified E-Discovery Specialist. He’s currently employed as a litigation paralegal in New York City, and continues to advise attorneys on legal technology. Look for a new tip on each night on www.litigationsupporttipofthenight.com.

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