War Room Advocate

This might be a short post, but it is worth mentioning. You have a trial coming up, so what kind of time schedule do you need to figure out? I’m hoping they aren’t telling you about how you need to set up a war room just a couple of weeks before they want to sit down and start working there. That sounds to me like a trial team that isn’t going to have a whole lot of services set up in an optimized way. You might get lucky and have some bandwidth. Or not. I say you should start getting information about the trial and the team around 4 months or more before trial is set to go. Honestly, with some communication going on, you could get clued in much earlier than that. 4 months is a good time-frame though. You guys are going to have to figure out where you’ll be staying, where the war room is going to be, and how you are going to provide services such as internet access. I have had experience in the past with having to use a phone company to deliver some type of internet service to...

For this post I’m going to assume that we have a team of 10 to 15 or more people. It doesn’t matter if it’s 40 really, you just have to scale some things for simultaneous use. This list doesn’t really count for a small team of a handful of people. Once again, a group like that can work pretty much out of hotel rooms with a couple of small printers. I’ll work up a post in the near future about small teams and what they should consider bringing with them. For this one, I’m talking about having a team of attorneys, paralegals, assistants, experts, graphics, hot seat person and maybe consultants. You don’t have to have all of those groups at trial, but on large cases it wouldn’t be unusual to find those and more. Let’s get down to it, shall we? You know you’re going to need good bandwidth. Refer to some of my earlier posts where I talked about working to get those services. So, let’s assume you have good internet access. You have to build a network for your team, so that’s as good a...

There are times when setting up in the hotel for your war room space just won’t work out. It could be that they have already booked up all of their conference rooms or they can’t provide any bandwidth. Another possibility is that the hotel is just too far from the court and your team wants to work closer in proximity. A whole new adventure awaits! Time to look for some space. I have been down this rabbit hole a few times. Getting some space you can work with could require persistence and patience. On the other hand, you might just stumble across the perfect setup right out of the gate. There might be a company that has set up workspace and contracts with law firms for blocks of time, and this might be just what you need. If you find something like this, you may discover that they already have a network set up, facilities for all of your equipment and space for the team to eat. If you don’t come across something like that, you’ll be looking for space to rent on a short term basis. ...

I’ve saved the best for last in this little series on getting internet access in the hotel. In the post titled Hunker Down, I talked about how you might have to just live with a situation where you don’t have any alternatives. Following that, Mix it Up was about having to make the decision to go somewhere else if the hotel just doesn’t want to work with you. In this post, I want to talk about the happy circumstance you will sometimes find yourself in where everything you need is already in place. It does happen. Especially in areas that have State or Federal Courts close by, there are likely to be hotels that have already invented the wheel. Maybe someone like me has been there before and laid the groundwork to get extra bandwidth in and all you have to do is pay to get it turned on. Maybe they have a lot of bandwidth already there and an IT group that can VLAN a portion of it off for you. When I talk with a hotel and they are very matter-of-fact about it and indicate that they...

I believe this situation doesn’t happen very often, but I have been in this position before so it is worth mentioning. You have been told you will be staying at a certain hotel, and when you start a dialogue with them about getting internet access set up you figure out pretty fast that they don’t really want to work with you. No, they don’t have more bandwidth. No, they won’t let you bring in outside access. No, you can’t have access to their cable infrastructure. You’re lucky they are letting you stay there, don’t you know? Guess what? It’s time to have a real “heart to heart” talk with the people that picked this as your home away from home. If it’s the only game in town, then refer back to my earlier post here . It is difficult to set up a really functional war room if you just have to hunker down. If this hotel is NOT the only game in town, then you need to find a new home. Seriously. I can promise you that there are other hotels that would be thrilled to have a contra...

Continuing this series on different scenarios that might play out with the hotel, I have to address the unfortunate circumstance that is a real possibility. I have (and the trial team I was working with) had to suffer with this before and I can tell you that it will motivate you to ensure that it doesn’t ever happen again. What I’m talking about is having to work in a place that doesn’t have enough bandwidth, and you can’t get any access from anywhere else. It makes me shudder just to think about how many ways this can be a bad thing. Let me explain some of the ways this is so undesirable. You’re sharing the hotels internet access with everyone staying there. You don’t know who any of these people are, to be honest. There could be a really good hacker type, or even more than one, on the same network as you. You’ll be competing with guests for the bandwidth too. In hotels, evenings are just awful regarding internet speed because everyone is getting logged on so they can video c...

In my last post here , I was listing some of the ways that things can go if you have to build your war room in a hotel. I want to take some time and talk about the first two in that list. Specifically, I am going to write about how to work through some of the issues you’ll face when you are tasked with getting things set up in a place that has never done this before, or not on the scale you need. Now is the time you’re going to have to be like a certain cat and open your bag of tricks. This is especially the time to put your soft skills to work because the next period of time will be about making connections with people and negotiating to create a win/win situation. It isn’t as daunting as it may seem, you just have to work through your list of things that have to get done and make those connections. Better start now! What kind of problems do you have to solve? If the hotel doesn’t have the bandwidth for your team, you have to come to some type of agreement on how you can bri...