It’s all a process

So you want to work in Litigation Support? Get ready to spend a whole lot of time doing trial prep work, busting your butt to get it all ready to go before lunch on Friday so the attorney can leave at their leisure that afternoon, and so you can actually take a lunch, just to have the case settle while you’re eating! 🙂

Yes, this actually happened last Friday, and it’ not at all uncommon. It also doesn’t matter.

You see, Lit Support is all about the process, not the end results. Not that you don’t care about the end results, naturally you want your firm to win it’s share of cases, not winning would be bad for business. But the results of the cases are not what the job is about. The job is about getting all the evidence, and tools, to your attorneys and paralegals so that they can go out and do what they need to do.

I think it’s interesting that many people who I talk to, after explaining what I do for a living, assume that I’m doing exciting investigations, and forensics, etc. They picture me looking through emails for the “smoking gun” etc., when the reality is pretty far removed from that. Most of the time, when I process evidence, load evidence into Summation, convert audio/video into digitized versions or create exhibits in Trial Director, I’m doing so without even knowing what the facts of the case are. I’m simply following the process for what needs to be done in the case.

In fact, to be frank, I don’t want to know what the facts are. It may be more interesting to know, but if I am simply following acceptable procedure, I’m a lot less likely to end up in court myself, defending the evidence handling. When you follow the procedure, by the book, every time, there won’t be much to question. We like it like that, and I’m sure our attorneys do as well.

So I’ll just keep going through the various processes, and whatever happens with the cases, will happen. Even if that means I spend a lot of time doing work that winds up not being necessary. You never know which case it will be necessary for!

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