Area's Oldest Courtroom Evidence Firm Merges with Technology Developer

Cleveland, OH – July 1, 2005 – Visual Evidence Co., a local courtroom evidence company founded in 1988, has partnered with Solutions Business Systems, a local technology provider, to develop and create a turnkey electronic discovery software/hardware package that is faster, more flexible and more economical than similar products offered by national legal vendors. The merger of the two organizations is effective as of Tuesday July 5th, 2005 and the new company will remain in its downtown Cleveland offices.

Now known as Visual Evidence/E-Discovery LLC, the company is the only local provider of electronic data discovery (called EDD) for law firms and in-house counsel involved in litigation, according to Daniel Copfer, President of the new entity. “While there are several national EDD vendors, we believe we have an advantage from a technology and cost perspective, not to mention our familiarity with every local court and the nuances of how local attorneys present evidence during a trial,” explained Copfer.

Courtrooms and litigators across the US have been drowning in paper evidence, and the legal profession has harnessed this revolutionary new technology to help it stay above the rising tide of inefficiency and clutter. Judges are now sanctioning the use of this sophisticated process that helps eliminate the flood of paper by sorting every document, e-mail and image ever stored on a hard drive. EDD creates a paper-free computerized catalog of data for instantaneous use as evidence in a trial. With increasing frequency, electronic discovery also unearths the “smoking gun” document buried in millions of sheets of paper collected from, for instance, 15 branch offices around the country – a search that until recently was always done by hand, in warehouses and law firm war rooms, with a high rate of human error.

Designed for large case management but ideal for pinpoint accuracy on smaller cases and projects, electronic discovery is becoming a critical part of a trial attorney’s toolkit. While retaining an EDD consultant is a significant investment in a case (costs can run from 10 to 25 cents per page and in some cases involve millions of pages of documents to examine), it is still far less expensive than using lawyers and staff to sift through a sea of paperwork. The new application from Visual Evidence/E-Discovery LLC delivers faster, more powerful tools for the document production process at a far lower cost than was available even 18 months ago.

Copfer is confident about the success of this new venture, noting that judges in courtrooms across the country have recently been siding on the case of using electronic discovery. “There was a notable case last year where the defendant requested documents be produced using electronic discovery and the plaintiff claimed it was technically ignorant and couldn’t, or didn’t want to use this new kind of electronic search,” said Copfer. As it turns out, the judge over-ruled the objection and forced the plaintiff to produce documents using EDD, whether it claimed ignorance or not.

While sophisticated electronic sleuthing has only been used in a handful of court cases in Northeast Ohio, David Porter, former CEO of Solutions Business Systems and now a Vice President with Visual Evidence/E-Discovery LLC, is ready for the demand to increase significantly. Because electronic discovery is so superior in terms of accuracy and thoroughness, “judges as well as companies going to trial are realizing there is nowhere to hide for a litigant attempting to cover up documents or data. If it is on a hard drive or a company’s network (data buried in e-mail storage, laptops, PCs or servers), we can find, search and categorize it for use in a courtroom presentation. The old days of carting mountains of boxes filled with paperwork to the courthouse are now gone,” said Porter.

Last year electronic discovery in California caught a defendant red-handed as it attempted to cover up the massive theft of proprietary documents from previous employers. The scofflaws even claimed to the court “you caught us - but now we really have erased all of it” when in fact many stolen documents still were buried in its servers and hard drives – and unearthed using electronic discovery techniques. “EDD is changing overnight how the facts are proven and presented,” Copfer said, “and it is speeding towards local courtrooms like a freight train. This new software, while incredibly sophisticated, is easy to navigate when installed at a client location, and we are partnering with firms to guide them through the process. We’ve been serving the legal community’s demonstrative evidence needs such as video recreations, scale models, timelines and medical illustration for the last 15 years, and we look forward to being their electronic discovery partner as well.”

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