Tips for Paralegals and Litigation Support Professionals

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

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8/1/2020: Maryland Court of Appeals on Social Media Authentication
In Griffin v. State, 419 Md. 343 (2011), the Maryland Court of Appeals found social media evidence must be shown to have not been subject to hacking or other manipulation.

8/2/2020: Relativity Integration Points
Relativity Integration Points (RIPs) assist with the import of data from third party systems into Relativity workspaces.

8/3/2020: Automapping with Relativity Integration Points
Integration points will perform automatic field mapping between a workspace and the load file.

8/4/2020: excel macro to hide multiple ranges of rows
It successfully hid more than 70 ranges in a few seconds.

8/5/2020: NIST Study on Facial Recognition – Too Many False Positives
False positive results were returned far more often than false negatives, and the software exhibited different biases.

8/6/2020: Circuit Court Ruling on PACER Fees
The cost of digital audio equipment used for recordings of trials and other proceedings can be taken into account for PACER fees.

8/7/2020: Emojis and the Law
The Android “Grimacing Face” emoji got the reactions shown in orange on the below chart, but the Apple version of the “Grimacing Face” face emoji got the reactions shown in blue.

Emojis and the Law

8/8/2020: Judges Agree: Limit the Number of Pages in Your Brief
“Let me add an incentive to the production of short and pertinent briefs.  The longer you make your brief, the more likely that most of the pre-argument analysis of your case will be turned over to a law clerk who just finished the bar exam.” – Hon. Arthur L. Alarcon

8/9/2020: D.D.C. Ruling on Adequacy of Search by Navy
“[T]he reasonableness of the Navy’s search is buttressed by the fact that Carlborg has offered ’no suggestion as to where else‘ the Navy ’might have looked for his records or what other search criteria should have been used.’” Carlborg v. Dep’t of the Navy, No. 18-cv-1881 (DLF), 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 142543, at *13 (D.D.C. Aug. 10, 2020) (quoting Peavey v. Holder, 657 F. Supp. 2d 180, 190 (D.D.C. 2009)).

8/10/2020: NIST Guide to Media Sanitization
There are three methods of media sanitization: clear, purge, or destroy.

8/11/2020: Excel OLE action error explained
An OLE action error message may be prompted if you click on a link to a PDF on a worksheet, and then try to OCR it.

8/12/2020: Enforce HTTPS
An admin can force visitors to a Relativity workspace to view it over HTTPS so that requests and responses are encrypted.

8/13/2020: Excel’s TEXT Formula
The formula can easily convert a column of numbers of varying lengths into a standard format with a consistent number of digits.

8/14/2020: Getting a count of volume shadow copies
VSCMount is a tool that helps you check to see if volume shadow copies are available.

8/15/2020: Never Use ‘However’ at the Beginning of a Sentence
Garner instructs brief writers to never use ‘however’ at the beginning of a sentence in order to indicate a contrast, and recommends using ‘but’ instead.

8/16/2020: Mississippi Court of Appeals: Jury Must See Evidence Where Spoliation Unclear
“[T]he  explanation for  the  original record’s  absence  may  be  fully  satisfying  either  that it  was  lost  through  no  fault  of  the  [party],  that  the [party]  deliberately  destroyed  it,  or  as  in  most cases,  somewhere  in  between,  thereby  making  it  a jury  issue.”  Murphy v. William Carey Univ., No  2018-CA-00910-COA, 2020 Miss. App. LEXIS 462, at *28-29 (Miss. Ct. App. Aug. 11, 2020) (quoting DeLaughter  v.  Lawrence  Cty.  Hosp., 601  So.2d  818,  824  (Miss.  1992)).

8/17/2020: 2 GB Text per Document
Relativity will not process more than 2 GB of text for any single document.  Such a document will generate an error that will cause processing to halt.

8/18/2020: Create htm file with links
Use this format:

<div align=”center”>

<a href=”https://www.google.com/”l”>Index2″</a> |

<a href=”https://www.yahoo.com/”l”>Index3″</a> |

<a href=”https://www.mlb.com/mets”l”>Index4″</a> |

<a href=”https://www.edrm.net”l”>Index5″</a>

</div>

8/19/2020: Simple File Upload
Relativity’s Simple File Upload tools allows users to load documents into a workspace without using the Relativity Desktop Client.  No more than 100 documents can be loaded at a time.

8/20/2020: Making Relativity Desktop Client Work For You
Don’t miss that you can simultaneously import data into a single workspace using different instances of the Relativity Desktop Client on up to four different computers.

8/21/2020: Common email threading problems
An embedded email link or attachment can cause email threading to be over inclusive.

8/22/2020: Separate email addresses with ; NOT ,
Email addresses in the recipient and cc fields should be separated by semi-colons.  If they are separated with commas, Relativity will read adjacent email addresses as a single address.

8/23/2020: regex from head on and from behind
If you want a regex search to find results from the beginning or end of every line start with (?m)

8/24/2020: District of Maryland Case with a Defendant Known Only By An IP Address
The Court ordered the issuance of a subpoena to produce documents identifying the Doe subscriber.

8/25/2020: ALSPs
The past few years have seen a rise in the number of companies and law firms using ALSPs – Alternative Legal Service Providers -which perform legal research; electronic discovery; and regulatory compliance.

8/26/2020: Excel worksheets that hide themselves
Beware of vba code that automatically re-hides Excel worksheets.  Spreadsheets can be set to make a worksheet you unhid disappear again.

8/27/2020: Regex multiline wildcard
Using (?s) at the beginning of a regex search will let you search from in front and behind while also using a wildcard.

Regex multiline wildcard

8/28/2020: Diffchecker
Diffchecker, is a free online tool that does a fine job of comparing differences between two text or PDF files. Diffchecker can also help you compare multiple versions of an image, allowing you slide back and forth between two versions.

8/29/2020: Florida Court of Appeal rules passcode protected by Fifth Amendment
The Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal agreed with the Petitioner that producing the passcode would require him to disclose the contents of his mind and provide the State with incriminating information that would be used against him. “Distilled to its essence, the revealing of the passcode is a verbal communication of the contents of one’s mind.”. Garcia v. State, No. 5D19-590, 2020 Fla. App. LEXIS 12232, at *8 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App.  Aug. 28,2020)

8/30/2020: finding duplicates with python
You can use a python script to find where there are duplicates in a character set.

8/31/2020: use code to generate list of links on a web page
Right clicking ‘Inspect’ and entering code on the console of the Chrome browser will create a list of all links on a web page.

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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