7 Best Practices to Follow for Creating Effective Electronic Briefs

1. Understand the Barrister’s Preferences

While there is no set rule for preparation of an electronic brief so you may first create your own process as to how you will categorise, paginate, collate the electronic briefs.

The next step is that you should ask the barrister how he/she prefers to see electronic briefs. They may have some preferred way of how they want to divide them, number them, paginate them etc. Knowing the barrister’s preferences will help you in making the barrister comfortable with the provided material.

2. Keep the Index Simple

Too many colours or different fonts or font sizes can be distracting. Use a clear and easy-to-read font in the index of the electronic brief and limit the use of multiple colours.

3. OCR

OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. It is a technology that enables computers to recognise printed or handwritten text from images or scanned documents. Once done it converts the digital text which can be searched and analysed.

It will make printed materials in the brief more accessible for the barrister to search for a specific word and find the matching results quickly.

There are many tools available for free or at a nominal cost which you can use to do OCR and empower the barrister.

4. Summarise Correspondence in the Index

Adding summary of the correspondence such as emails and letters within index of the electronic brief can provide several benefits.

Firstly, it can save time and effort by allowing the barrister to quickly have a snapshot of the matter within the index.

Secondly, this can help the barrister in organising large volumes of correspondence into a more manageable format.

Additionally, summarising correspondence can be utilised as an useful reference tool while presenting the case. So, the barrister will be able to easily access the most important information contained within the documents in a few pages.

Overall, summarising correspondence in the index of the electronic can be an effective tool for increasing productivity and efficiency.

5. Provide a Chronology of Events

A chronological order of events can help the barrister to understand the sequence of events. This will enable them to identify any gaps or specific items which can be raised in the case further.

Providing a chronology of events in a case to a barrister can be extremely beneficial to build a stronger case. This can be used as an effective tool in the hands of the barrister because you are assisting them to be well-prepared.

This will save time and effort which can be used in the preparation of cases.

6. Provide a Summary of the Matter

This can help to ensure that the barrister has a clear understanding of the key issues in the case and can allow them to focus on the most important aspects of the case.

It will assist the barrister to understand the context of the case, including the key facts, issues and events that have led to the case being brought to this stage.

7. Double Check Before Submission

Finally, before submitting the electronic brief, double-check to ensure that it complies with all of the above-mentioned items. Furthermore, review to check whether all the pagination is correct.

Moving Forward

In conclusion, creating electronic briefs that follows a procedure and with the use of some effective ways of presenting it can change the way the case will be dealt with.

Using the above mentioned items as a practice while preparing electronic briefs will ensure that you are empowering the barrister by providing him all the key information in lesser words.