Office of Defender Services Announces Litigation Support Available to Defenders and CJA Attorneys

Got a case where the discovery comprises mountains of documents and oceans of electrons? Then you just might benefit from the litigation support services offered by the Office of Defender Services. "What's litigation support," you say? As the spiffy new National Litigation Support page at the ODS website explains,

The essential goal of litigation support is to organize, analyze, and present case materials through computer systems. In federal criminal defense cases, there are three primary ways that litigation support is used by Federal Defender Office (FDO)staff and Criminal Justice Act (CJA) panel attorneys. One is in conducting electronic courtroom presentations. Another is management and analysis of paper documents and their electronic equivalents. The third is the identification, collection, preservation, processing, review, analysis and production of electronically stored information (ESI).

It's apparently all the rage in the world of civil litigation, and quickly becoming a must-have resource in federal criminal defense practice.

So head on over to the NLS page—might as well bookmark it while you're at it—and check out a helpful glossary of common litigation support terms, an initial discovery assessment checklist, recommended e-discovery practices for FPD and CJA attorneys, contact info for the NLS team, and a guide to obtaining litigation support services and software in the CJA system.