Tip #14 - Use the Copy function to quickly duplicate information on certain pages – speeds up data entry!

Quite often, you may have a situation where there are multiple parties on either side of the litigation - i.e., multiple plaintiffs or multiple defendants. (In SmartAdvocate, some firms choose to have multiple plaintiffs in the same file). In either scenario, it is not uncommon to have the same information applicable to both plaintiffs or both defendants. So, the same insurance information (insurance company, policy number, policy limits, claim number, etc.) may be applicable to both plaintiffs or both defendants and the same defense firm may represent both defendants.

The insurance information (for both plaintiffs or defendants) and defendants’ law firm/attorney must be entered for each individual party, even if the information is the same for both. SmartAdvocate allows you to quickly copy identical insurance and defense attorney information from one plaintiff or defendant to the next. Here’s how:

Enter the appropriate information, as you normally would, for the first/primary plaintiff or first/primary defendant. The screenshot below is an example of insurance and defense firm information for the primary defendant.

This case has a second defendant (who was an employee of the primary defendant, covered under the same insurance policy and represented by the same law firm).

To copy the same insurance information to the second defendant, you would simply right-click on the grid  displaying insurance information for the first defendant (or click on the action icon in the far right column of the grid, if displayed), choose ‘copy,’ select the name of the second defendant from the drop-down for defendants, and then click the ‘Save’ button at the bottom of the dialog box.

The information (insurance in this example) will now be duplicated to the second defendant.

Use the foregoing procedure to copy defense firm information to a second defendant or insurance information for a second plaintiff as appropriate.

[Tip: If you will be doing this copying at the same time you are entering the primary party information, it is suggested that you refresh the screen after you have entered and saved the information for the first party prior to executing the copy function.]