War room equipment

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 place to start as any. I’ll write another post soon about different ways you can configure the network such as right out to the internet or VPN.

For the networking equipment part, you’re going to need a switch or switches if you will be using different spaces (floors, hotel rooms, conference rooms). You need lots of Ethernet cables in different lengths. I always try to take three or four really long cables (50 to 100 ft.) for trunking or other special needs. I like to have a small UPS to plug my router and main equipment into. That’s an Uninterruptable Power Supply, which basically means a big battery. It can keep your network up and running in case of power outage and can also prevent your equipment from getting fried in an electrical storm.

It is also important to bring lots of equipment to plug stuff into. I usually bring several heavy duty extension cords. You know the type, bright orange and for use with outdoor equipment. I can promise you that you won’t have every computer sitting next to a wall outlet. You should also have LOTS (that’s a technical term) of quality power strips with several outlets. These are a little more expensive than cheap ones, but worth every penny. Get them with long cords, not some 12” power strips. You will be shocked about how many of these you’ll use in the war room.

Computers are a whole different topic. Most of the people I have worked with bring their own, but there are so many variables to this topic I can’t get into it now. It is becoming the standard to provide two monitors for most people at trial. People want at least 22” to 24” as well because they are spending so many hours staring at the screen during a trial. Purchase your own or rent them. There are companies that will rent equipment like this nationally, so that’s a good option if you don’t want to purchase. Even if people are working with a notebook computer, it’s nice to plug it in to a monitor and have a keyboard and mouse. You should plan for that at a minimum for everyone.

There will have to be printers, and lots of them. Both color and black and white. I recommend renting them from someone local, so you can get support if they have any issues. Printers don’t travel well either. You’re going to have to have at least one big copier / scanner. Scale that and add more as your team grows. I can promise you that you’ll never regret having two or three copiers if the team is big enough. They become high speed printers and will be put to good use. Try to rent them and the printers from the same company. Have them give you enough “consumables” (that means toner) for a weekend of non-stop printing. It is shocking how much printing goes on when a trial is ramping up.

Even with the copiers, I would still recommend one flatbed scanner to be set up on someone’s computer. Use this for quality scans of graphics or important documents for the graphics people. With that said, graphics and hot seat people will usually have their own equipment, although they might request to have monitors.

Back to what’s on the network, it is a really good idea to have a server that can host the files people are needing to access as well as print queues. Yes, you can print straight to TCP/IP addresses. I can promise you that setting up the printers up one time on the server will save you time and grief. And you do have a backup copy of your data with you, right? Put it on a shared folder on that server and then people don’t have to get every file from the main office, with the subsequent slow print times. This subject of “where does your data reside?” is another topic that can be a whole post, so I’ll write about that and post soon.

Those are just the basics. I’m sure I’ve forgotten several things. It pays to be organized, plan far in advance, and have a good group of people that work with you and can help to bring all this together. I haven’t even mentioned all of the office supplies you’ll need. I’ll make that another post as well. Refrigerator? You bet! Coffee? Don’t even think about forgetting to get that set up. Snacks too, can’t forget all the snacks. These people are going to be working crazy hours.

Shred boxes, don’t forget that either. You’re going to have to contract with a shredding company to come as soon as you have finished the trial. Speaking of which, the whole process of what has to happen at the completion of trial is another post. Heck, I’m just writing about what I’m going to be writing about here! Truth be told, it is a big production to go to trial and you need someone that knows what they are doing to bring it all together, or a small team. I’ll add some equipment to the list above if I read over it later and remember some important things to add. Stuff, as I like to call it.