Sean O’Shea: Tips for Paralegals and Litigation Support Professionals – January 2019
ACEDS is thrilled to introduce our latest blogger, Sean O’Shea. Sean posts a litigation support related tip each night at http://www.litigationsupporttipofthenight.com/. Sean’s posts take a deep dive into the technical tools legal professionals use with a healthy crossover into case law. Our readers will be bound to find something that eases their challenges or piques their interest.
-Mary Mack
Presenting January 2019:
1/1/2019 Peter W. Martin’s Legal Citation Guide
Searchable online guide to the rules of legal citation, with cross references to the Bluebook.
Superfetch is an option in Windows which preloads applications to reduce load times.
Slack, which stands for ‘Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge’, is a widely used collaboration tool.
1/4/2019: HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library
HeinOnline has PDFs of law journal articles dating back to the 19th century.
1/5/2019: M.D. Tenn. Rules on Spoliation Motions
EPAC Techs. v. Harpercollins Christian Publ., No. 3:12-cv-00463, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1816 (M.D. Tenn. Jan. 4, 2019) – identification of four relevant emails that were not produced did not support a finding of spoliation.
If you have created multiple pivot tables on a worksheet you can use a slicer to apply filters to all of the tables at once.
You can use slicers on Pivot tables to apply timelines on pivot tables which include a date field.
The tskill Windows command will close all instances of an open program.
The Supreme Court of Wisconsin ruled that AI can be used for criminal sentencing.
Sentieo allows you to pull tables from multiple SEC filings and compare them side by side.
1/11/2019: Commonwealth v. Equifax, Inc., (Mass. Super. Nov. 28, 2018)
Judge Janet L. Sanders rejected Equifax’s Motion to for a Protective Order seeking to prevent note taking or summarizing of data viewed in a virtual data room, and allow the use of two confidentiality categories: ‘Confidential Secure Documents’ and a more restrictive ‘Confidential Secure Data’.
1/12/2019: Excel Add-in To Merge Multiple Workbooks
Ron de Bruin’s free add-in for Excel lets you merge multiple workbooks.
1/13/2019: UK Hospital’s PHI Policy
The information governance policy of the biggest cancer care center in Europe requires that its staff understand their accountability for data breaches and pass an annual data security test.
1/14/2019: S.D. Tex. Awards Sanctions for Failure to Disclose Information About Related Suit
On 1/10/2019, Judge Gray H. Miller, issued a decision, Garcia v. Vasilia, No. H-17-1601, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4371(S.D. Tex. Jan. 10, 2019), granting in part the Plaintiffs’ motion for sanctions for failure to disclose information about a related case that was not covered by the parties’ electronic discovery agreement.
1/15/2019: Working with Excel files in Python
A quick tutorial on how to access data from Excel workbooks using Python 2.7
1/16/2019: Supreme Court of Tennessee Adopts Rule 34 Specificity Amendment
The comments to the amended version of Rule 34 note that while it will not be necessary to submit a log of withheld documents, a party must give an adequate enough description of them to facilitate an informed discussion of the reasons for the withholding.
1/17/2019: Using Python to parse data
Demo of a Python script to add returns between multiple strings that are separated with unequal blank spaces.
1/18/2019: Use Python to create a comma delimited set
The Python split function will generate a comma delimited set.
1/19/2019: Gilded Age Electronic Discovery
Attorneys of the Gilded Age used cipher codes in telegrams.
1/20/2019: Excel Chart Trendlines
You can use six different trendlines for Excel charts: linear; exponential; logarithmic; power; polynomial; and moving average.
1/21/2019: Google Fined €50 Million for GDPR Violation
On 1/21/19, the French data regulator, CNIL, fined Google for violating the GDPR. Consent was ruled not to be valid when information about how data would be used for personalizing advertisements could only be located in several different documents. CNIL also faulted Google for pre-selecting the option to consent to the data collection.
1/22/2019: Forecasting with Trendlines
Forecast future trends with an Excel pivot chart.
1/23/2019: CNIL Guide for Processors
France’s Commission Nationale Informatique & Libertes (CNIL) has published a guide to assist the processors of personal data comply with the General Data Protection Regulation.
1/24/2019: Script to add slip sheets to PDFs of exhibits
Script that can be used with PDF Combine to add slip sheets to a set of exhibits.
1/25/2019: Action to Extract Pages from Multiple PDFs
Extract the same page range from multiple PDFs using a Java script
A decision finding that costs for converting native files to TIFF images could be taxed under 28 U.S.C. § 1920 even against plaintiffs that voluntarily dismissed to appeal class de-certification.
1/27/2019: C.D. Cal. Grants Motion in Limine to Exclude Evidence of Sanctions for Spoliation
The Court granted a motion in limine to exclude evidence of sanctions because it, “would be improper to provide an additional remedy, in addition to the sanction awarded by the Magistrate Judge.”
1/28/2019: Fix half deleted characters in Excel
This problem may come up when you have text enclosed in double quotes.