by Russell Aoki
Today, Seattle's Aoki Sakamoto Grant (www.aokisakamoto.com), has three partners, four associates, and five support staff. My practice focuses primarily on felony criminal defense, and I use technology daily in my law practice.
But until the summer of 2002, the most document-intensive criminal case our firm had handled involved a couple of banker boxes of documents. That all changed on July 30, 2002, when President Bush signed the Corporate Corruption Bill (Sarbanes-Oxley Act).
The next day, on July 31, 2002, Kevin Lawrence, the CEO of health care company Znetix was indicted on a $92 million securities fraud claim. Lawrence was penniless from a series of asset forfeiture actions and other civil suits, including one brought by the Securities & Exchange Commission. Gone were the exotic cars, the luxury homes, and the extravagant lifestyle. The court asked our office to be Lawrence's court-appointed counsel.
Within days, we learned that there were about 2 million pages of potentially relevant documents in several cities along the West Coast. Most were business records, some pertaining to the issuance of securities that were the basis of the prosecution. Jennifer Shaw and I were Lawrence's co-counsel, and immediately faced with the question of how we, along with our paralegal, Salimah Karmali, were going to tackle the mountain of discovery.
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