“Although there is inevitably much commonality between products, there are also differences. There are major differences of principle, minute differences of user interface, and a host of points of middling importance – middling, that is, until you need what suddenly appears to be an obvious function which you had not thought about and discover that the developer had not thought about it either.”

This is an extract from an article called Choosing Litigation Software on my web site at www.chrisdalelawyersupport.co.uk

The article considers commonality and differences between litigation support applications and looks at broad factors like scale and ownership, access and responsibility, the support and responsiveness of the supplier and the importance of training.

It is easy to be paralysed with indecision over something so apparently complex and necessarily mission-critical. The article includes this suggestion:

“Some people must analyse every option, see every demo and define a detailed specification. Others rely on gut instinct and the view of the man in the pub. This may seem reckless, but I would steer the litigation support novice more towards the latter approach. I would feed my gut instinct with some broad parameters and perhaps be choosy about the pub, but most of the software around is adequate (at least) for most Disclosure exercises.”

The “broad parameters” include those summarised above. Perhaps the most important of those is the advice to rent, rather than buy, whichever litigation application you choose.

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