5/1/2020: (California Styling)
The California style is distinguished by enclosing citations in parentheses and putting the venue and year between the case name and reporter cite.

5/2/2020: Predicting the number of top level clusters
The general rule that a higher generality setting will lead to fewer top-level clusters in Relativity will not always turn out to be true.

5/3/2020: Companies are sharing your data with Facebook
What is Off-Facebook activity?  By default, your Facebook account permits businesses to share information concerning your online activity with Facebook.

5/4/2020: Pivot Table Cache Limit
Excel creates a cache of a pivot table’s outside data source (which shows the totals listed in the table itself based on the original complete data source) but only retains the first 65,536 rows of the data source.

5/5/2020: Excel formula to pull column headings when given value is entered
A formula in Excel to extract the column headings in a range of data for which a given value is entered.

5/6/2020: PowerShell Script to Get Hash Values of Multiple Files in Multiple Folders
PS C:\Users\SeanKOShea> Get-FileHash -Algorithm MD5 -Path (Get-ChildItem “C:\FooFolder\baseball2\*.*” -Recurse -force) | export-csv c:\FooFolder\Batch01b.csv

5/7/2020: certutil command to generate hash values for multiple files
You can use this script to generate a list of hash values for multiple files in a single folder: for %F in (*) do @certutil -hashfile “%F” MD5 | find /v “hashfile command completed successfully” >>list.txt

5/8/2020: INDEX MATCH divided is faster than Excel
A nested INDEX MATCH formula only runs slightly faster than VLOOKUP, but when the INDEX and MATCH formulas are placed in separate cells, results can be obtained almost five times faster than with than with VLOOKUP.

5/9/2020: Speeding up VLOOKUP
To run a binary search but avoid an approximate match, use a VLOOKUP inside a IF . . . THEN formula

=IF(VLOOKUP(A3,I:K,1,TRUE)=A3,VLOOKUP(A3,I:K,3,TRUE),NA())

5/10/2020: Renaming Tables and Queries in Access Can Crash Your Database
If you select the option to ‘Track name AutoCorrect info’, and ‘Perform name AutoCorrect’ under File . . . .Options . . . Current Database, Access can avoid errors by updating object names automatically.

5/11/2020: Relativity Integration Points
Relativity Data Transfer uses integration points to transfer saved searches; folders; and production from a Relativity workspace to another workspace or a load file.  Integration Points also substitute for Relativity Desktop Client in importing load files or Office 365 directories into a workspace.

5/12/2020: N.D. Cal. 26(f) ESI Checklist
The United States District Court for the Northern District of California has posted a checklist on its site, for parties to consult when addressing ESI issues at Rule 26(f) meet and confer.

5/13/2020: Draft Declarations – 28 U.S.C. § 1746
When filing a declaration in federal court, reference 28 U.S.C. § 1746 which provides that a matter may be supported by an unsworn declaration as being true under the penalty of perjury.

5/14/2020: Excel formula to parse out Nth words in cell
The number of the string to be extracted is referenced in cell $B1

=TRIM(MID(SUBSTITUTE($A2,” “,REPT(” “,LEN($A2))), (B$1-1)*LEN($A2)+1, LEN($A2)))

Cell $A2 references the cell with multiple strings that is to be reviewed.   The formula uses the LEN formula to calculate the position of the string, and the MID formula to extract the string.

5/15/2020: Running Regex searches in an Access database
Visual Basic code creates a RegEx function that you can use in SQL query.

5/16/2020: Garner’s Guide to Making Briefs More Persuasive: Tip 9 – Allow time for a full citation check of both the record and the caselaw
It will take a full day to check the fact and legal citations in a brief.

5/17/2020: Calculated Items in Pivot Tables
When you’ve created a pivot table in Excel, you can easily add two fields together and list the result in new field – one not present in your original data source.

5/18/2020: DAT-daddy to parse by ¶ and þ in Excel
ENF Discovery has a great add-in for Excel that can help you parse out fields in Concordance .dat load files.

5/19/2020: PowerShell script to merge .csv files
A PowerShell script posted on the Microsoft Scripting blog here, can be used to merge multiple .csv files together.

5/20/2020: vba code to unprotect Excel worksheet
I tested this macro tonight on a workbook protected with Excel 2019 using a four-digit number, a dictionary word, a short phrase, and an eight character alphanumeric code and it cracked each one in seconds.

5/21/2020: Finding Hidden Dialog Boxes with WinLister
If you’re having trouble finding a hidden dialog box that’s preventing you from accessing an application, try downloading another great utility from Nirsoft: WinLister.

5/22/2020: Cornell Survey of Juror Thoughts on Trial Technology
“Many jurors are accustomed to learning through technology, and technologically enhanced presentations present an ideal platform to summarize and connect the dots between the evidence presented at trial and the applicable law in a way that is especially useful for visual learners.”

5/23/2020: D. Colo. Applies Alice Test for Hierarchical Data Storage System
The Supreme Court Alice test was applied for a patent on a hierarchical data storage system used for security and surveillance.

5/24/2020: The CSI Effect
Dramas which focus on forensic investigation in criminal cases have led to there being a large number of people in jury pools who expect to presented with extensive forensic evidence.  This in turn raises the standard of proof for public prosecutors.  Circumstantial evidence may not be given as much importance as it should.

5/25/2020: In-Depth Study on the CSI Effect
The study reached the conclusion that, “participants who demonstrated a higher level of pro-prosecution forensic evidence bias perceived weak DNA evidence to be of higher probative value in this murder trial scenario.”

5/26/2020: Unicode compliance
MS Exchange uses unicode for PST archives.  However individual email messages saved with a .msg extension don’t use unicode for the email header fields.  Tools which collect local .msg files may garble the text of email headers unless an adjustment is made for the Outlook encoding.

5/27/2020: Windows’ Character Map
Don’t miss that Windows includes an application called Character Map which you can use to look up the alt codes and unicodes of thousands of different characters.

5/28/2020: DATEVALUE to force Excel entries into the Date format
Don’t miss that you can use the DATEVALUE function in Excel to correctly format dates entered in a column, if selecting the cells and right clicking and selecting Format Cells and picking the date format on the Number tab doesn’t do the trick.

5/29/2020: Excel formula to go from A to ZZ
=IF(G9>25,CONCATENATE(CHAR(MOD(QUOTIENT(G9-26,26),26)+65),CHAR(MOD(G9-26,26)+65)),CONCATENATE(CHAR(MOD(G9,26)+65)))

5/30/2020: Garner’s Guide to Making Briefs More Persuasive: Tip 10 – Revise. Then proof carefully
Make several passes: once for punctuation; once for formatting; once for transitions; once to confirm the headings are consistent.

5/31/2020: Editing marks
Many common editing marks used in proofreading can be entered with Unicode references. 2050 gives you the close up space mark: ⁐