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 Re-print of MasterFile review in "The Verdict"
David Bilinsky
Past Co-Chair of the ABA TECHSHOW
There is a new evidence analysis and strategy software package now available for litigators. MasterFile helps lawyers pull together case strategy, facts, evidence, issues and people, into one database. If you are looking at an alternative to CaseMap by itself, CaseMap + Summation or CaseMap + Concordance, you may wish to look at MasterFile.
MasterFile's approach is to create a "master-file" (database) to capture and organize all your case knowledge and information including evidence, transcripts, authorities, extracts, facts, argument, chronologies, players, issue list, questions and reminder tasks. This design eliminates the need for two systems (a litigation support and a document management system) to manage your documents and case strategy. Consequently, its document repository provides comprehensive document management for work product, pleadings and paper documents.
You can link to and explore the relationships between all your case elements as the database contains full text and extracts of all the evidentiary documents, as well as the facts of the case. MasterFile is designed for the mobile lawyer - you can disconnect from the network and work from anywhere. On reconnecting, at the offi ce or over the Internet, you get full, bi-directional, synchronization of the entire database and with your entire workgroup.
How does it work? Typically, you start by entering the facts of the case in MasterFile. You can assess these facts by relevance, impact and status. Using "doc-links", you link the facts directly to your evidence that has also been brought into the MasterFile database in the form of scanned document images, transcripts, authorities, research, electronic evidence such as photographs, audio/video segments, etc. You can also use evidence extracts rather than the full document. The "doc-links" will take you directly to your reference — even to audio or video files. Within your facts, you build your legal argument and substantiate it with direct references to your evidence or extracts, point by point.
You can view events as a chronological list or in two day, weekly and monthly calendar formats which allow you to see the relationship between events. Events that span a time period, i.e. have a start and end date, can be shown as repeating events on each day of their duration. The calendar format view can also be full text searched to view events relevant only to a particular issue or player.
Relationships between facts, players, places, issues, events, etc. are very often the key to "cracking" that elusive case or understanding how the evidence and facts of a litigation or investigation fit together. MasterFile's "Explore" tool lets you explore and follow chains of relationships among all these without having to constantly open and close moded windows.
For searching, MasterFile features a full text index and search capability which includes operators for proximity searching (i.e. within sentence or paragraph), fuzzy logic (to help ignore spelling or OCR mistakes), phonetic searching, and other options. By using MasterFile, you are able to not only search your evidence (documents, extracts or facts), but also you can search your notes, arguments or any other information in the database (i.e. your case strategy).
MasterFile can bring in and store evidence in any format into the database, including native file format (for discovery or e-discovery disclosures), PDF format, or both together. There is an optional OCR/ PDF Evidence Cruncher Engine that will convert, in bulk or on the fly, your Word, Excel, scanned documents, etc. into standard PDF format – which saves you having to acquire Adobe Acrobat for this purpose. The OCR is loaded with the PDF image, allowing you to search the OCR, make extracts, etc. The ability to use PDF documents allows you to work with virtually any electronic document by converting it to PDF and bringing it into MasterFile. The Evidence Cruncher also facilitates document production and archiving. The format can be paper or electronic, as individual fi les or as a MasterFile briefcase, in native or PDF format with or without Bates page numbers.
MasterFile works within Lotus Notes and allows you to use the full functionality of Notes with MasterFile (email, calendar, address book, to-do list, etc). You can email doc-links to another member of your team – eliminating email attachments – and the doc-link will take the recipient to their copy of the referenced database of MasterFile, ensuring security is maintained. However, if you don't use Lotus Notes e-mail, the same functionality is also available to Outlook users. Lotus Notes is a quiet workhorse that rarely gets adverse publicity and as such, it may come as a surprise to learn that Notes has 110,000,000 users and a larger market share than Microsoft (46% market share vs 44.2% for Microsoft; Gartner Group, 2004). Notes is the engine behind MasterFile.
MasterFile takes advantage of Notes' private/public key security mechanism for authentication, to control access to individual documents, extracts and facts, to encrypt Internet communications and encrypt all database information, including documents, so everything is secure even if a notebook is stolen. This is particularly important since so many computers, particularly laptops, are being stolen these days.
MasterFile is a self-contained litigation support product that brings the functionality of many different applications together in one place – eliminating the need to integrate different and separate applications, simplifying support and end-user complexity. Since all the data is stored in the MasterFile/Lotus Notes database, and MasterFile brings within it the evidence analysis and strategy tools all in one package, there is no real need to link to other applications.
MasterFile is priced for small or solo practices but the technology can scale to handle large cases. Current pricing is $395 (USD) for a single user and $995 for five users. Lotus Notes is available for USD$99, in single user quantities, including server software if needed, and is installed just like any other Windows software.
MasterFile requires:
• 20mb free hard disk space, plus space for Lotus Notes,
• Screen resolution 1024x768 (minimum), and
• Lotus Notes 6.0.3
Notes' database engine has been designed to handle databases over one terabyte in size; at present, however, Lotus is certifying databases only up to 64G. For files with larger data storage requirements, you would have to break documents up into different logical groups and use doc-links to refer across the databases.
MasterFile is a unique and affordably priced product that deserves a serious look if you're considering CaseMap, Concordance, Summation and/or need comprehensive document management.
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