While the rapidly appearing gray hair may tell otherwise, I do not yet consider myself to be to be a “senior partner.” I don’t know all the federal judges on a first name basis, and I don’t tell stories about how it used to be. I have, however, been around long enough to witness the incredible advances that have been made in the areas of document management and trial presentation. For the last 15 years, my entire practice has consisted of civil litigation, mostly concentrated on complex commercial and environmental litigation where you live or die with documents. I have, therefore, been forced to educate myself, sometimes under fire, about available technology.
Imagine this. You are a first-year associate. The year is 1991, and your firm has just been hired by a Fortune 500 company to take over one of its largest cases from another firm. My assignment was to get the case file and quickly decipher what it contains. I put on my best suit and flew to Dallas to inventory the file.
