War Room Advocate

I used to work for a network security provider, so maybe I think about security a little more than some people. I believe that it is so important to ensure that access to the war room is controlled as much as possible. I know that trial teams can’t have a security guard standing at the door all the time checking identification, but the team needs to be aware of keeping the space secure. From a physical security standpoint, it means that the last person to leave the workspace needs to pull the door closed and test it to make sure that it doesn’t open with a hard pull. Sometimes there will be a lot of people if you’re in a hotel, and their curiosity will get the best of them. It can look like a parade of people walking by and looking in to see what’s going on in there. It is really an interesting thing to the hotel guests to look at what they think of as a conference room and see a fully functioning war room. It’s like a train wreck that they can’t look away from. There is...

Over the years, I’ve done so many trials. I would like to say I’ve done hundreds because sometimes it feels like it, but that wouldn’t be true! I’ll guess that I have supported some 50 to 70 trials in one capacity or another over the last several years. Of course those trials run the gamut from settling or being continued, to going the full length in court. With the trials that get settled, or even continued, the whole war room space still gets planned out and built. You have to build it because you can’t count on anything other than the fact that you have a court date and must plan to be ready to go. I can post about the prospect of “pencils down” in a subsequent post. What I’m writing about in this post are some quick thoughts about war rooms in general and what they turn out to be in real life. There seems to be a prevalent feeling with those that don’t go to trial that it is a vacation. People see that you leave the office and travel to (sometimes) interesting locals. Their thi...

Firms that go to trial frequently know that there are a lot of puzzle pieces that come together to be successful at a trial. Obviously, the lawyers doing the lawyering are the most important part! Beyond that, there are a lot of other parts that have to come together to make everything go as well as possible. Staff – many firms have various staff members that they bring along and they are all important. Paralegals clearly have a critical role in organizing everything and ensuring that the trial team is prepared for their court date. Assistants (secretarial) can be the right-hand of attorneys and/or paralegals and also provide a very valuable service. Some firms bring IT and Office Services personnel along as well to help with all of the things that come up. Graphics – there are firms that have “in-house” graphics people and many that use consultants for this type of work. Many graphics people are proficient with programs like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, animation software an...

Printers and copiers on just one side of room Sometimes it seems that this is all everyone cares about when you set up workspace for trial. Sure, people need to access the internet and get email, and they want a comfortable work area. There is something about printing at trial though, it starts right away and continues until that last person doesn’t need anything else so you can finally break down. I have made the joke at more than one trial that once people get there they will start to print “the library of congress.” It is a marvel how much printing goes on in earnest as soon as people sit down. This is one of the single greatest things you have to get right when you are planning for your group. You’ll need black and white printers, and color printer(s) as well as high speed copiers that can scan and hole-punch and staple and so forth. If you have to get rid of anything, lose the printers and keep the copiers. It’s not a bad idea to have both color and B&W copiers. Tru...

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. ...