10 Trial Lawyer • Summer 2023 Scott Lucas By Scott Lucas OTLA Guardian In the old days (i.e., when I started practicing in the mid-90s), if a case needed investigation, the only question was whether to hire an investigator or do the investigation ourselves. We had the luxury of having an in-house investigator who was ex-law enforcement and someone we considered to be the best investigator in the state. I watched this professional investigator document the scene of a crash or the damage to vehicles, and I read the investigator’s reports of witness interviews. Later, I often did that work myself. The advent of digital images made it easy and inexpensive to take pictures of all angles of a car or an intersection. When we were considering suing a polluter for contaminating the groundwater of a neighborhood, I went doorto-door speaking with homeowners and tenants to find out what they knew. I frequently called witnesses listed on a police report. My early experiences investigating cases or assisting with professional investigations were invaluable to my development as an attorney, but they were also time-consuming and often inefficient. Sometimes, there is no alternative to a good, old-fashioned, in-person investigation, but today, many investigations can be done more efficiently and more thoroughly using technology. Lately, I've become a user of crowdsourcing techniques using social media, where information collected by others and crucial to proving a case can often be found. What is crowdsourcing? In general, crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining information or input into a task or project by enlisting the services of a large number of people, either paid or unpaid, typically via the internet. Crowdsourcing typically involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing information, ideas or opinions. Crowdsourcing usually involves gathering information via the internet, social media or even smartphone apps. You may be enjoying the benefits of crowdsourcing without even realizing it. For example, if you use a traffic app like Waze, other users are reporting crashes and other roadway incidents that then provide real-time, updated information to app users. The reason that you knew to take a back road to the airport instead of your usual route on the freeway was because of information crowdsourced from other drivers. Gathering information Crowdsourcing can yield information about a case. When Sara took in a case where an explosion killed employees at an industrial plant and devastated a neighborhood, she realized the event would be newsworthy. She logged onto Reddit and Facebook to see what people were saying about the explosion, and she found posts by eyewitnesses. The posts included photos that pinpointed the origin and cause of the explosion, showing that a fire in a tanker truck ignited nearby storage tanks at the plant. This told Sara that her client, who was an employee of the industrial plant, had a potential third party claim against the owner-operator of the tanker truck involved in the explosion. Sara also found a horrific but dramatic photo of her client engulfed in flames following the explosion that she could use to support her case. In another case, Channing was preparing for trial, and they were worried because they needed evidence that what AND OTHER MODERN INVESTIGATIVE TECHNIQUES CROWDSOURCING
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