Things have been quiet around Asymptomatic this week because I have been spending entirely too much time playing catch-up with email and other tasks in the evening. Why haven’t I been doing this during the day when I would usually expect to be able to do it? I’ve been on jury duty.
As a jury member, I’m not supposed to discuss the case outside of the courtroom. I take this matter pretty seriously, and I fully intend to abide by the judge’s order on that matter, at least until the trial is over. At that time I should be able to say whatever I want and, really, I have a lot to say. But I did want to expound on another topic that is an adjunct to my court experiences this week:
Lawyers eat trees.
Most records start their lives originally as paper documents. Say you have a mechanic look at your car and you sue him for not performing the work properly. There would likely be some record of the work performed, and you would likely find it documented on paper, as opposed to video, or audio, or some other recording method.
Even if the original is non-paper format, the lawyers in the case (or other people in their firm) will probably produce written transcripts of the recording so that events can be referred to by page and line number.
Minimally, each side needs to provide copies of these documents to the opposing counsel and to the court so that everyone has those references beforehand. There may also need to be copies to which any witnesses can refer, so in some cases each witness will need his own copy of certain documents.
These documents can include depositions. Before some types of cases, the lawyers will sit each involved or relevant individual for an interview that is part of the record. They are sworn to tell the truth and all of that, and their statements are taken in a question and answer form, just as if they were in the witness chair in court, except that there is not jury. Witnesses are expected to say the same sorts of things at trial as they did at their deposition. In any case, the depositions are obviously long ordeals in which the lawyers try to extract every possible detail from the interviewee. As such, they aren’t so much “long” but “hideously long”.
Sometimes witnesses can get out of participating in depositions by sending sworn statements or reports (especially in the case of expert witnesses), which can also be long to the point of absurdity.
Generally, depending on the detail of these documents, they could be numerous and thick.
It also seems in style to produce large versions of the documents for reference by jurors. So if you are a lawyer and you have a specific point to make about a specific piece of documentation, and you think that it will benefit your case to allow the jury to see and refer to this document while witnesses give their testimony (because remember, the only evidence that can be considered is that which has been provided from the witness box, not counsel or the documents themselves), then you will produce yet another copy of the document, but this time at a grotesquely enlarged size so that even the legally blind (ooh, pun!) can see it from the back row of the jury box.
No, seriously, these things are huge and often each mounted on their own piece of foam board. Investing in foam board seems like a sound investment as long as lawyers exist and are doing this documentation thing.
Essentially my point here is that there is a huge inconvenience of reference - meaning that documents are so numerous that the correct one and its appropriate internals hare hard to find - and that several trees are killed for each trial’s worth of required documentation.
I can only assume that the paper is recycled somehow. It’s really the only way I can reconcile the use of so much paper. We’re talking about selling a Staples out of copy paper here, folks. There is that much of it just for one case.
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not a big fan of recycling. I live in a town with three paper mills that only produce recycled paper, so it’s been a part of the local economy and my life for a very long time. So yes, sure, I should be concerned with ecology, and while I am not (usually) in active opposition to recycling, you’ll know that I think putting recyclables out every week like trash is an utter waste of my own energy, and do not believe that we’re really concerving anything in the grand scheme of things.
So when I tell you that the volume of paper that lawyers use makes me a bit ill when I think about it, that should probably tell you something.
Hopefully, as we’re apparently in the process of building a new court building for our county, the new courtrooms will have installed more modern appliances for the dissemenation of information. For example, all of the documentation that counsel brings to court could be scanned and stored on a USB memory device. Plugging this device into a console at the counsel’s table would make it readily available and shared to anyone who needs it. Moreover, it could be projected onto a screen for larger viewing, and would be searchable or at least bookmarkable for the purpose of quickly locating relevant passages.
Screens at the plaintiff/prosecutor’s table, defendant’s table, judge’s bench, witness’ stand, and jury’s projector could all be syncronized to display the same document for review. Even the court clerk could have copies and be in charge of “passing the copies” to whomever needs them, just like he or she does now.
I am sure there is some reason why they don’t do this. System failure is probably a primary reason. But we’re getting to the point that a single case (they run continuously throughout the year, and if a case makes it to trial, it’s nigh on guaranteed that its going to have a significant amount of documentation rolling behind it by that time) is going to cause a measurable drain on our natural resources. Surely we could devise some system that could mitigate this issue.
Next crusade… switching over the court reporters (and their admittedly cool stenotype machines) to video cameras so that jurys can expediently review pre-recorded, pre-cut testimony without all the sidebars and interruptions that happen during typical court procedure, which would essentially be identical to a live experience since, as I said, if it doesn’t happen in the witness box, it’s not considered testimony.
Keep an eye on this space in the coming days for my complete jury experience, and please excuse any extended absence also resulting from my participation in our legal system. Maybe next time, I’ll line up some guest posters to keep us all entertained.
