ShadowCounsel 

A Sensible Alternative ShadowCounsel believes sole proprietor, small to medium sized full-service, and even specialized boutique litigators are generally unimpressed with, or entirely ignorant of, big firm information management technology (a.k.a. Automated Litigation Support or "ALS" for those of us who've had to suffer through more than a few meetings on the subject). That said, most lawyers know deep down that continuing to tread water in a sea of paper is ultimately bad from both a business and personal quality of life perspective. ShadowCounsel's experience suggests that the use of technology as it's used in big firm litigation 1) is priced well beyond the wallets of most sole and small firm practioners, 2) is in many instances so complicated and sophisticated, much of the time unnecessarily, that lawyers have neither the time nor inclination to use it, 3) tends to be relatively unreliable at best, and entirely inoperable at worst, 4) is too often a "flavor of the month" proposition, in which today's red hot litigation support vendor will be tomorrow's Edsel, and 5) that the relatively low percentage of high-end technologies put to good use by large firms faced with literally millions of pages worth of hard copy and electronic discovery are not at all necessary in cases comprised of fewer than 500,000 documents. Given the horror stories many litigators have heard regarding the application of digital technology to their practices, no wonder many dismiss the idea without trying it at all. Rest assured there exists a sensible technological solution for the gun-shy in this regard, and ShadowCounsel is here to provide it. Why Digitize? Save physical space. Better organization. Find information quickly. Easily shared information. Better information security and preservation of source data.  Protect your documents against theft or loss due to natural disaster. Work where and when you wish. Ease of use and proven reliability Generate hard copies instantly from your printer whenever you need them. Decrease your reliance on others for data control without sacrificing speed and efficiency. Save time. Save money. Better client representation.

One Man's Experience "I've been practicing law for more than twenty years, with experience as a government trial lawyer, head of the litigation department in a medium-size law firm with a full complement of associates, paralegals, and legal secretaries, and for the last four plus years as a solo practitioner/small firm lawyer with a very active litigation practice. Adopting a paperless operation has enabled me to maintain and expand my practice with far less staff support than would ever be possible in a typical law office. In a paper driven practice, a large part of a legal secretary's day is spent in file organization and maintenance. The documents come in, are delivered to the attorney, retrieved from the attorney, and filed for the attorney. If more than one attorney wants to review the documents, numerous trees are sacrificed at the alter of the photocopier. Pleadings and discovery are received, reviewed, retrieved, indexed, and filed. The same documents are often retrieved, reviewed, and refiled on multiple occasions. The same is true for correspondence, bills, invoices, etc., etc. The bane of a legal secretary's existence is filing — I never knew a secretary who didn't hate it. In addition to all of this, of course, is the inevitable misfiling of documents and the numerous search operations required to find the file that just isn't where it is supposed to be, or that is buried on someone's desk. A well designed document management system in a paperless environment eliminates all of this. In my current practice, one secretary serves three attorneys…All outgoing documents are saved as pdf's — no photocopies are made or maintained (we do keep originals of some documents, such as affidavits and verification pages on interrogatory responses). We do not have file cabinets full of documents, do not need storage units for closed files, and we spend almost no time searching for misplaced paper…the secretary…spends no time on filing or managing paper files.  Though I admittedly have not done an empirical study of the differences in staff support required by a paperless operation versus the standard way of practicing, my prior experience tells me that the paperless operation has reduced the administrative support requirement in my practice by better than fifty percent. This might be different in a transactional practice, but in a litigation environment where paper flies like snow in the arctic, a paperless practice allows me to compete with much larger firms and keep my administrative overhead to a minimum.” David N. Ventker Ventker & Warman, PLLC 101 West Main Street, Suite 810 Norfolk, VA 23510

Specific Service Offerings High-Speed Document Scanning. State of the art data capture, including enhanced OCR, along with manual bibliographic metadata coding. Remote paralegal support - Electronic document production, including automated Bates numbering, protective order confidentiality designation and electronic redaction; bookmarking, file parsing and indexing; hyperlinked, exhibit notebooks, briefs and witness binders; document review and other analytical work not requiring a JD, including that utilizing CaseMap and related products; expert witness support; deposition and trial prep; and a host of other legal assistance options. Document shredding - ShadowCounsel provides for certified destruction of your hard copy documents.