SourceXtract gives attorneys, paralegals powerful sorting with low cost and minimal training

March 27, 2012 - PRLog -- For more information:
Cory Hofman, 800-928-4610 xt 903
Martin Johncox, Alexander and Associates Public Relations, 208-658-9100

Even for someone who had testified in hundreds of court cases, this case was exceptional: 1.2 million documents, 120 plaintiffs, the federal government and a Fortune 500 company.

So, Cory Hofman turned to a software tool he had developed for his work as an expert witness; it efficiently classified and organized hundreds of thousands of documents so attorneys could sort them for briefs, filings and citations. Little did Hofman know at the time that he was beta-testing SourceXtract, a software product he is now marketing to attorneys at small- and mid-sized firms.

“The program gave us the ability to access specific documents out of a huge collection and produce individual or group documents very quickly if needed – tasks that may have taken days were reduced to a few hours,” said Walter Bithell of Holland and Hart in Boise, one of the lead attorneys in Adams, et al. vs. U.S. & DuPont. “We think this software reduced costs for clients, improved our work and played a role in helping us secure one of the largest recoveries in Idaho history.”

When Holland and Hart called on Hofman to help figure out the lost value of Idaho farmers’ crops, Hofman found his role increasingly growing into document management. And it’s not too surprising: the prevalence of computers means many conversations, communications and meetings are now recorded digitally, when in the past such documents simply would not have existed. A typical lawsuit has up to 10,000 documents existing as PDFs, emails, Word files, spreadsheets, media files and other formats, and more complex cases may have tens or hundreds of thousands of documents.

“Document organization and retrieval is a huge issue in modern litigation and becomes a major expense,” Hofman said. “The ability to wage an effective legal effort is tied, in large measure, to the ability to organize and control documents.”

SourceXtract (www.sourcextract.com) is an outgrowth of Hofman’s work at GEC (www.thegecgroup.com), where he is an expert economic witness. Typically, attorneys would send him thousands of documents so Hofman could render an expert opinion on the value of someone’s life, career, business, crops, etc. He’d spend many hours sorting and linking documents to an index and didn’t want to invest in - or take the considerable time to learn - advanced legal document software. All Hofman really needed was to efficiently cite, sort, hyperlink and extract documents. Hofman conferred with a friend, who wrote a program for him to use. That was around 2006.

SourceXtract is downloaded from the Web site and it needs no CD (a 30-day trial version is also available on the site). The process begins with the document log, the master index of all documents that is routinely compiled in legal cases. To construct the document log, someone must assign or enter the Bates numbers (unique numbers that identify each document, which attorneys have been using for about 120 years) as well as other fields to indicate the document is privileged, its author, topics, dates, and so on.

Once the document log is created, it is imported into SourceXtract, and the paralegal or attorney tells SourceXtract which folders on their computer contain the documents in the document log.

•   To hyperlink the entire document log, the attorney just clicks on the  “process button“ and within seconds, each document in the file is hyperlinked to the log.
•   With that done, it is easy to sort, filter or convert all or selected parts of the document log into a hyperlinked index, providing one-click access to any document.
•   It is easy to create custom sets of documents for experts, witnesses, exhibits, filings and trial presentations.
•   The new document log is a PDF file that can be shared with other parties.
There are three different levels of SourceXtract:
•   SourceXtract Lite is designed to search, extract and compile source documents cited in briefs, affidavits and other legal documents.
•   SourceXtract uses a four-step process with a document log to extract and compile case PDF documents and bundle them with a customized, hyperlinked document index.
•   SourceXtract Pro combines Lite and SourceXtract into a single package, providing more comprehensive solutions to document management.

Hofman says SourceXtract offers about half the capabilities of more advanced software suites for attorneys, at about 10 percent of the cost. Indeed, many of the highly sophisticated legal software packages go unused even for their more basic capabilities, simply because attorneys don’t have the time or desire to learn them. And to use these complicated applications, a paralegal typically receives additional (and expensive) training so they can do the document sorting and higher-level tasks.

Bithell agreed, saying Holland and Hart has such advanced software but he finds it cumbersome and complex.

“Once we started using Cory’s program, it virtually replaced our other document management programs, because it was so user-friendly,” Bithell said. “Even a technologically challenged attorney can use it and we were stunned at how fast we could retrieve documents. It allowed us to focus our time on tasks that require a lawyer’s level of training.”

Hofman said SourceXtract is useful in the interview process because attorneys can quickly create a custom log to guide questioning and find documents. It’s also helpful in trials, because its relative simplicity makes it highly reliable. Having testified hundreds of times, Hofman has seen the full spectrum of trial presentations. Hofman has been at trials where lawyers using more advanced software required tech support to accompany them to make sure the advanced software worked.

“I’ve seen attorneys fumble and poke around for electronic documents during a trial and their program seizes up and they had to go to their printed backup copies,” Hofman said.  “With SourceXtract, a single attorney can easily access the PDF list of exhibits; one click and poof, there it is in the courtroom.”

While Hofman developed SourceXtract in his consulting work with GEC, he set up The Motivo Group to own and market SourceXtract. He is developing some other software to simplify other legal processes and he will put those under The Motivo Group as well. Hofman held a private placement and relied on about 12 shareholders to bring the software to its final form, set up a web site and begin marketing.

“From the standpoint of a business niche, we think we will be successful among small- to mid-sized firms because they can’t afford huge programs and really don’t need all that,” Hofman said. “They need the ability to quickly access, sort and hyperlink
documents and create custom document logs, and that’s where SourceXtract excels. We aren’t doing anything fancy with SourceXtract, and that is its strength.”

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Whether you are an attorney or paralegal dealing with hundreds or thousands of documents, SourceXtract is the simple yet powerful solution to your document management needs. From automatically compiling case documents, to hyperlinking PDF documents to document logs, to preparing trial exhibits, SourceXtract can help.