Clarity Legal Software - Customer Spotlight
John Leblanc - Attorney
Barger & Wolen LLP
633 West 5th Street - Forty Seventh Floor
Los Angeles, California 90071-2043

John, what kind of practice do you have?
Barger & Wolen LLP encompasses a full range of legal services, including corporate and transactional, insurance regulatory, litigation and reinsurance. My practice focuses primarily on litigation matters affecting the health care industry. I represent many of the nationals leading health insurance and health plans, including the largest not-for-profit health care service plan in California. Most of my time is spent drafting and arguing motions, in deposition, mediations and at trial.

I have spent my entire career at Barger & Wolen, and act as the partner in charge of technology.

What size is your practice and how many employees do you have?
We currently have four offices, in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Newport Beach. We have 80 attorneys, and a staff of approximately 100 individuals.

What technical setup do you have at your office (number of machines, etc)?
All attorneys and staff have state-of-the art desktop workstations and can access the Windows XP office environment through a high-speed WAN. We have a centralized-data storage facility for backup, which eases duplication to our disaster recovery co-location. Our Cisco VOIP telephone system integrates voicemail that is delivered to a sound file that can be accessed though desktop email or blackberries, which are supplied to all attorneys and management. The firm also has a extranet where attorneys and clients come together to securely share documents and other information related to their cases or matters. Client extranets are available to clients with access to a web browser and the Internet and provide immediate access to documents, including Word, PDF and Excel; work product, including research results; discussion threads and a calendar of events where deadlines and tasks can be tracked. The firm currently subscribes to Westlaw for legal research.

Approximately 50% of the attorneys utilize laptops. I carry a 15 inch MacBookPro, 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 3 GB Ram, running Leopard.

What suggestions do you have for people using technology in their practice?
Involve your IT department in the evaluation of new technologies. Our IT department first brought the idea of integrating an extranet into the firm's practice to me, and together we looked into the various alternatives. Once they got my attention, I was able to convince the partnership of the necessity of this technology.

What bag of tricks or software do you use the most in your practice? Is there a special feature in any of the packages that you like the most?
Visuals have always been an effective way to persuade, as studies have shown that visuals increase recall and understanding. I use Microsoft PowerPoint, and its Mac counterpart, Keynote, to create visual presentations that help me convince juries, mediators, and opposing counsel that my arguments are correct, and to illustrate the weakness of my opponent's arguments. Typical PowerPoint presentations, however, are often static and dull. Both PowerPoint and Keynote allow the user to customize presentations that can result in powerful visual persuasive tools. Integration of the documentary evidence and deposition testimony into PowerPoint and Keynote allows the audience to see the actual evidence, not simply my recitation of the evidence.

TrialSmart and DepoSmart now allow me to extend those principles of persuasion beyond opening statements and closing arguments to the presentation of evidence during trial. TrialSmart further allows me to take my opponent's graphics and easily present them during my openings and closing, on my terms.

What advantages do you have over your competition as a result of the way you employ technology in your practice?
Having complete access to my case files via my laptop provides a huge advantage both pre-trial and at trial. DepoSmart allows me to flag common issues raised at deposition, and to quickly search for key evidence. TrialSmart allows me to present and highlight evidence almost on the spot.

At trial, juries almost expect something more than the traditional opening and closing statements. Technology available today allows me to present complex material in an understandable manner, and tap into a part of the audience that is often neglected by the opposition.

What trends do you see in legal technology?
The "paperless office" seems to have legs, and for good reason. All of my active cases now reside on my laptop, and I can access almost everything I need from the laptop. I no longer have to lug large claims files and hard copies of depositions on airplanes. I appreciate having access to files, research, memos and pleadings from prior cases on demand.

What technical challenges to do you face in your practice?
Convincing "non tech oriented" colleagues of the usefulness of certain technology. I find that demonstrating the technology is helpful, but there is still a reluctance on the part of many lawyers to embrace and learn new software. We try to introduce new systems, software and procedures slowly, so that the changes are subtle.

Privacy concerns are ever-present, especially in dealing with insurance companies and health plans. Clients now demand that law firms ensure the privacy of their members' personal information, especially in the litigation setting. This has placed new demands on firms' IT departments to install systems and procedures that can be followed by all attorneys and staff easily.

What Clarity Legal Software products do you use?
Deposmart and TrialSmart.

What Clarity Legal Software product feature do you like best?
The online video tutorials answer most of the questions I have. If not, the staff is almost always online during business hours, and accessible by iChat. I've obtained answers to questions during depositions!