It’s just so easy to plug a few numbers — or a list of names — into an Excel spreadsheet. But the ubiquity of this program in corporate offices creates headaches for legal counsel involved in big case litigation or who are trying to keep their clients prepared for that possibility.
“Excel files screw everyone up,” says Mary Pat Poteet, litigation support manager for DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, who is based in the firm’s San Diego office. That’s because Microsoft Corp.’s designers probably didn’t anticipate that in the course of litigation, an attorney might need to see the history of changes made to a defendant’s spreadsheet, or want to print it out exactly as it appears on the screen or in its native data form. Merely pulling it up or printing it out can taint it for evidentiary purposes. The same can be true for e-mails. Attorneys who aren’t tech savvy enough to know how to handle data with electronic rubber gloves can run into trouble. And corporate clients have to know that any editing or deletion of data must be carefully considered.
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