LAW OFFICE COMPUTING  JUNE 1997  WINTON WOODS 
ast month we talked with some generality about the future of document management in the law office. In this column I would like to descend to some particulars and discuss a single application that I find increasingly indispensable. That product is created and developed by Odyssey Development Corp. in Denver and is named ISYS. Most of you are familiar with full text searching because you have used Westlaw or Lexis or one of the multitude of CD-Rom based sources of legal information. The core of that search technique is the application of Boolean algebra to the process of analyzing a set of text documents. The Westlaw-Lexis pattern is to contain huge sets of documents in increasingly broad categories of content. Thus in Westlaw the database named "allcases" contained all of the cases decided by any American court whether it be state or federal. The database "allfeds" contains all federal cases and the database "ariz" contains all of the Arizona cases. Any of those databases can be searched for specific terms or combinations of terms with lightning speed. Obviously if you search for the term "consideration" in the "allcases" database you will find a bazillion instances of cases where that word is used. Indeed, there will be so many that they will be virtually useless unless you are able to make a more precise search. That is where Boolean theory comes into play. The application of Boolean algebra to the text searching engine allows you to refine your search by asking for all cases in which "consideration" can be found in the same sentence as the word "nominal" or some other descriptive word that serves to limit the number of instances or "hits" in the database. Obviously "nominal consideration" is a phrase that will appear fairly commonly in American cases. If you are interested in the concept of nominal consideration that has been developed in the Arizona cases, you may seek to restrict the number of instances by choosing only the "Ariz" database and if you are really concerned with the newest cases you may seek to further restrict your search to cases that have come about since 1990. All of those things are easy to do with full text searching engines that allow the use of boolean searchs.

ne of the problems, however, is that construction of effective search terms is a bit of an arcane science. People undertaking the study of Westlaw and Lexis are often stunned by the complexity of the searches constructed by their trainers. The people at Odyssey Development have taken that factor into account in the construction of ISYS.

ISYS allows you to organize your office documents in exactly the same way that Westlaw organizes its various resources. You can create any category or database that you choose. You may take all of the documents in a single case and put them into a database entitled Jones Litigation or you may take copies of every lease agreement your office has ever created and put them into a database called Leases. You might put all of your depositions in a single database entitled Depositions or you might put the depositions in the Jones Litigation in a database called Jones Litigation Depositions. In other words you may collect documents and store them in any category that you choose and once you have done that ISYS will allow you to create a database search engine for finding the places in those documents where information is contained. Let's say for example that you have taken all of the depositions in the Jones Litigation and have put them into a single database. You are interested in finding every instance in which a witness spoke about your client George promising to do something. To find each of those instances all you need do, is to ask ISYS to generate a list of documents that contain the word "George" within ten words of the word "promise." ISYS will in a New York second generate a list of every document and tell you how many times the word "George" shows up within ten words of "promise" in that document. You can sort those documents in variety of ways, either by file name, or date, and then by a simple mouse click on an arrow go to the instance in each document where those two words appear within ten words of each other. When you find what you are looking for another click will bring it up in your word processor or save it to a notebook. There are actually a number of programs that provide you with that kind of Boolean search capability. ISYS is different, however, because of the simplicity with which it constructs searches. ISYS has a "menu" based search construction device that makes it easy for anyone to quickly construct a search.

ISYS is wildly powerful when you are reviewing deposition or trial testimony. When you find something that you want, all you need do is to highlight it and click on "print" in order to get an immediate printout of the material you want. You can construct an examination of a witness in far less time than you have ever done before. You can prepare an argument based upon the record with ease. The ability to search your entire electronic information store with a few clicks of the mouse is nothing short of amazing. I now keep all of my computer files in an ISYS database and whatever I want I can get in a second or two. All I have to do is remember a word or two in context and ISYS will take me there. You may not believe it, but I haven't lost a file in years!! May your summer be productive and cool. See you in San Diego?