STAYING CURRENT ON IMAGING SOFTWARE

Submitted by: Tracy Marshall – Image Capture Engineering – Training Manager

In March, Midwest Paralegal participated in the five day LAW 5.0 Certified User Program. This program is comprised of three training courses: LAW 5.0 Imaging Certified User, LAW 5.0 EDD Certified User, and LAW 5.0 Certified Administrator. At the completion of each course, participants are required to take a written examination and complete several projects to demonstrate their knowledge of LAW 5.0. Typically, this training is held in Omaha; however, Midwest Paralegal wanted to ensure several of their employees received training and asked that I come to Milwaukee and conduct the same training.

Those who participated in the training not only demonstrated exceptional knowledge of their existing software (LAW 4.0 ad Z-Print), but also knowledge of the litigation support industry. I was impressed with their eagerness to learn LAW 5.0, apply their new knowledge to previous projects they had worked on, and identify how they would now accomplish a similar project using LAW 5.0. All trainee participants did exceptionally well on their written examinations and projects with scores all above 97%.

BLACK & WHITE VS GRAYSCALE

The difference between a black & white document and a grayscale document can be confusing to those new to imaging. Most often people are accustomed to describing any image without color as black & white as in black & white photography or black & white movies. In terms of document imaging, these examples would be considered grayscale because they show a tonal range in shades of gray.

When a document is scanned, it becomes a series of dots or pixels. Typically there are 300 dots per linear inch on a page or 300 DPI. In a black & white document these dots can be simply either white or black. In a grayscale document the dot can be any of the 256 shades of gray from black to white. Scanning in this manner, of course, greatly increases the file size of a document but is nothing in comparison to scanning in “true color” or 24-bit color. 24-bit color uses 8 bits to represent red, 8 bits to represent blue, and 8 bits to represent green. 28 = 256 levels of each of these three colors can therefore be combined to give a total of 16,777,216 mixed colors (256 × 256 × 256). For file size comparison the picture below at the dimensions shown the full color image is 445.6 KB, the grayscale image is 148.5 KB and the b/w image is 18.8 KB. This discrepancy will only be increased with larger documents.

In a document management environment, black & white is typically preferred to keep file sizes down but sometimes grayscale can become necessary to keep a document legible. Midwest is capable of providing the client with either, as well as color images.

11 MONTHS, 2 TERABYTES, 1 SETTLEMENT

In May of 2006 Midwest Imaging and eData support received a plea for help from Axley Brynelson in Madison regarding the need to convert and produce a large amount of electronic data as quickly as possible. What started as 72 NSF files rapidly turned into about 2 terabytes of ESI! (That would be equal to 2,554 CD’s). Working very closely with Axley Brynelson, and their Texas client – Trilogy Software, Midwest was able to provide practical solutions to very unique situations. We supplied a format that allowed personnel in Belgium, India, England, Texas and Wisconsin access to the over 1,000,000 pages of documents for review, while culling out duplicates and superfluous testing files. In early April, the two sides reached a settlement in the case. Mike Modl, the lead litigator for Axley wrote in his announcement of the settlement, “Please pass on to your team my appreciation for the great work you all did on this case.  I have recommended you to a number of people and would not hesitate to use you for future projects.” Thank you Mike, it truly was a pleasure working with you and your team as well!

TECHBITES

TIFF
('tif)
Function: noun
Tech Definition: Tagged Image File Format (abbreviated TIFF) is a file format for storing images, including photographs and line art. Originally created by the company Aldus, jointly with Microsoft, for use with PostScript printing, TIFF is a popular format for high color depth images
TIFF format is standard in document imaging and document management systems. In this environment it is normally used with CCITT Group IV 2D compression, which supports black-and-white (also called bitonal or monochrome) images. In high-volume environments, documents are typically scanned in black and white (rather than color or grayscale) to conserve storage capacity.

IMAGING SOFTWARE UPGRADES
IN PLACE!

Midwest Paralegal Services, Inc. selected LAW (Legal Access Ware) in 2001 as it’s imaging and pre-discovery tool. They recently have upgraded to a more powerful version of itself. In order to make the most of the product, Midwest flew out their trainer, Tracy Marshall for a five day long, on-site training marathon. The newly released upgrade allows Midwest to handle much more volume in much less time.

This new version combines production level imaging and electronic discovery. LAW 5.0 can be used to extract full-text, metadata and hyperlink to the native file for review in popular litigation support software packages such as Concordance and Summation. LAW 5.0 pre-discovery™ allows users to easily cull down data to save time and money!

• New Export Utility allows users to export electronic discovery (native files and/or images), scanned images, or both in a single export.
• New export formats for Concordance and Summation allows users to directly write to Concordance and Summation databases.
  Dynamic Tagging System allows users to populate tags using hot keys, mouse, or global updates.
• New filtering capabilities for faster searching and culling.
• Enhanced Query Builder includes saved queries and search history.
• Enhanced “New Case” dialog allows users to apply case descriptions and assign cases to clients of projects.

The end result is a tighter, more efficient software tool to accomplish the discovery demands of our clients. Thanks to Tracy Marshall for her thorough training and her scenarios of practical applications.

Midwest Paralegal Services, Inc. has recently purchased TimeMap software to create timelines for its clients. As you enter facts, TimeMap automatically generates a proportional time scale and positions Fact Boxes above the date on which they occurred. If you have more boxes than fit comfortably in one page, you can change the number of pages and TimeMap automatically rescales the timeline and repositions your Fact Boxes. A single TimeMap visual can be up to 100 pages wide. TimeMap also offers an import utility you can use to create charts based on data from Excel, Summation, Concordance, Access, and any other spreadsheet or database tool. The end product can be exported for use in products such as Powerpoint. Color coding and attaching document images that appear as needed, are all features of the product.

If you are interested, the cost to the client is the time it takes us to enter the dates. Contact Glenn Hertel (ghertel@midwestparalegal.com) or Roland Johnson (rjohnson@midwestparalegal.com) with any questions.

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