LOC92\LawDB.MS
14 October 1992
5,480 words

Data bases made easy--or hard
Depending on the demands of the project, there are two kinds of programs

By Norman Bauman

When Technical Equities, the San Francisco investment advisory firm, went bankrupt, the litigation was a mess. Dozens of law firms filed suits on behalf of hundreds of investors. The documents reached millions of pages.

One firm handled it with a simple data base.

McDonough Holland & Allen, in Sacramento, represented one of the parties, and the paper came pouring in. "When we got into this litigation," said Legal Assistant Nora R. McDaniel, "there were approximately 350 individual cases filed, 75 law firms, and a large number of pleadings. We would get, easy, a 3-foot stack of pleadings and discovery a day."

"First we had to just determine what cases were there, who the plaintiffs were, who the defendants were, and who was representing whom," said Ms. McDaniel. They finally identified 40 cases involving their client. Then they opened case files and pleadings files.

On the Macintosh II, Ms. McDaniel set up four data bases: one to track document service, a second to track the deposition transcripts, a third to track calendar dates, and a fourth to summarize documents. She used FileMaker Pro, a popular and easy-to-use flat file data base. "It took me about 8 hours apiece to set up the original data bases, but now I could clone a new one in half an hour."

"FileMaker Pro couldn't be easier," said Ms. McDaniel. "I worked on an R:Base system on DOS, and I had to hire a programmer every time I had to do something. But with FileMaker Pro, anybody can come in and set up a data base."

A different kind of user, with a different kind of task, might prefer a more powerful program, even though it's more difficult. Consider 4th Dimension, a Macintosh relational data base. "It's the most powerful data base I've seen, a sort of souped-up dBASE III," said patent attorney Ernest E. Schaal, counsel for Chevron Corp. It takes "a certain amount of development time and upkeep time," he said. Mr. Schaal estimated that he has spent 100 hours a year on it for the last four years, getting it into a smooth point-and-click form.

Now Mr. Schaal has a system that is customized to his specific needs, that tracks his patents and other activities, and that prints out individual letters, rather than reports, to keep his inventors, managers and vice presidents informed in greater detail than he could have without the computer.

But 4th Dimension is not for everyone. "I would not recommend it for people who are not power users," said Mr. Schaal, who is upgrading his Macintosh SI's memory to 17 MB to handle his data base. "There are flat files for the Macintosh that are easier."

Hard or easy?

There are two basic kinds of data bases: Hard and easy. There are easy-to-learn data bases like FileMaker for the Macintosh or Q&A for the PC that are designed to replace index cards and Rollodexes. They are completely satisfactory for maintaining many routine lists in the law firm.

There are also powerful, difficult-to-learn data bases such as 4th Dimension or Double Helix for the Macintosh, or Paradox, dBASE, Clipper, and FoxPro for DOS, which can be developed into elaborate office automation systems. These programs are the tools of power users, data processing managers, and full-time programmers. Many attorneys are excellent programmers, but data base development is a time-consuming task. A relational data base in Paradox is a major project usually done by full-time programmers or power users.

This article will describe how four law firms use simple and complicated data bases, on the Macintosh and PC. It gives case histories of how they set up simple, useful flat-file data bases, to track clients, memos, and files; and how they set up more complicated relational data bases, to manage more complicated lists of names, calendar schedules, billing data, and document assembly.

1. Simple flat files on the Macintosh

Untangling liability in the Bay

McDonough, Holland & Allen, P.C., in Sacramento, California, is a general-service civil firm with about 80 attorneys and 200 non-attorneys in three California offices. The Technical Equities case was part of their litigation practice. They also have a corporate, tax, probate, real estate, and toxic torts practice; and represent hospitals, municipalities, and other public entities in Northern California, said senior shareholder Harry E. Hull, Jr. Mr. Hull devotes about half his time to "untangling the responsibility for toxic and other environmental contamination" with state agencies and private property owners.

Toxic tort cases are document-intensive. "A lot of documents are generated as the litigation is going on, with the state and federal government overseeing it, and environmental engineers constantly coming out with technical reports," said Mr. Hull. "A lot of times you go back through the chain of ownership, and generate a lot of documents on the history of the property," he said. "You can get into a lot of paperwork real quickly."

To handle those documents, they use a Macintosh system with MS Word, under a System 7 operating system. The attorneys have Macintosh SE 30s, and the secretaries have Macintosh IIcx's with large-screen black-and-white monitors. The attorney workstations communicate with other machines over QuickMail, and can access the back office system for billing and other information. They can easily convert and exchange files with DOS-based machines.

Heavily computerized courtroom

The case that tested the Macintosh was the Technical Equities litigation. That was a business and securities fraud case in the Bay area, filed in federal and state courts, said Mr. Hull. Technical Equities, in San Jose, was a high-profile financial service, which advised on pension and property sharing funds for the Oakland Raiders and other celebrities. "They ran into trouble in the real estate downturn," he said. "It was a major Ponzi scheme." Technical Equities went into bankruptcy, and hundreds of investors filed suit. McDonough Holland represented some individual officers of a real estate development company. "There had been something like 600 depositions, and we had a lot of catching up to do," he said. The documentation reached millions of pages (although McDonough Holland didn't need to go through them all).

Four data bases for litigation support

"I set up four data bases in FileMaker Pro," said Legal Assistant Nora R. McDaniel. The first kept track of service of papers, the second kept track of depositions, the third managed a complicated and constantly-changing calendar, and the fourth handled the document summaries.

First, to get an overview of the litigation, Ms. McDaniel created a data base of attorneys, with their names, addresses and phone numbers, their clients, and the cases they were handling. This became the Service List Data Base, which inter alia generated mailing labels for the 32 attorneys who received pleadings. The advantage of FileMaker Pro, Ms. McDaniel said, is that it is very easy to modify--you can start simple, and add fields as you need them.

"We started out with a simple data base, of attorneys and who they represented," said Ms. McDaniel. "Then I added a fax number field." As she dealt with the other firms, some paralegals were particularly helpful, so she added a "Paralegal Contact" field. Later, the cases were consolidated, so she added a field for the consolidated case number. "So the data base can continually grow as you need it," she said.

"I can shape the size of the fields," said Ms. McDaniel. "I can move them around." In contrast, to move a field in Q&A, the user must enter a revision menu, erase the field, and retype it in the new place.

Depositions, calendaring and abstracts

Second, to keep track of the depositions, Ms. McDaniel created a simple Transcript Management Data Base, with eight fields, including name, date, case, location of notes, location of hard copy, and disk number. She then prepared a chronology of the trial, hearing and deposition transcripts, so that they could search the transcripts in their litigation support system. The court reporters supplied hearing transcripts and depositions on disk, and the transcripts were searched in a separate Macintosh program, Ready for Trial!

Third, to handle the frantic scheduling of discovery, hearings and briefs, Ms. McDaniel created a Docket/Calendar Data Base. Three to six depositions were scheduled per day. The schedules were changed "on a daily basis, and occasionally on an hourly basis," and she had to update the docket and notify the attorneys. The firm now uses a similar data base to handle the entire docket for the firm. They can print calendars of appearances and deadlines for the entire firm, individual departments, individual attorneys, and individual clients.

Finally, for tracking and abstracting individual documents, Ms. McDaniel created a Document Summation Data Base. The problem with some packaged litigation support software, she said, is that the fields may be limited. A data base like FileMaker Pro can have an unlimited number of fields.

A good document summary data base will control data entry to minimize mistakes or variations. "You want to have menus for as many fields as possible," said Ms. McDaniel. The "Name" field should have a menu, so that the names will be entered in a consistent style. The "Type of Document" field should have a menu for Letter, Agreement, Contract, or other type.

The Macintosh clearly favors good graphic design. Ms. McDaniel's reports and screens used a graphic display to organize the fields by category to make them easier to understand. The same design would take much more effort in a DOS environment.

2. Powerful relational DBs on the Macintosh

"My legal practice is intellectual property," said Chevron corporate counsel Ernest E. Schaal.

Mr. Schaal's main responsibility at Chevron is patent prosecution, preparation and licensing. "I track everything from initial disclosure from the inventor to us, to the issue of the patent," he said.

After a substantial amount of time customizing 4th Dimension, a difficult data base, he's tracking his patents on the Macintosh, sending out routine correspondence automatically, and keeping his inventors and managers better-informed than he did before.

Macintoshes easier, more pleasant to use

"Macintoshes are easier to use, more pleasant to use," said Mr. Schaal. Macintosh programs are more compatible with each other.

Mr. Schaal uses a Macintosh SI, with 5 MB memory and an 80 MB hard disk, although he is upgrading to 17 MB. "The upgrades on my programs are getting bigger and bigger, so 5 MB isn't enough any more," he said. "On a Mac, you can have a lot of things going at the same time. But I have a huge data base, so I can't have 4th Dimension at the same time as a Microsoft Word."

Running it off the docket

Mr. Schaal uses the data base as the core of his system. He uses it for his docket, and hangs most of the other functions onto it. The docket "is a sort of docket/case management/document assembly program," he said, "in that it keeps track of all the things I have to do, and the status of all open patent applications."

"I use the document assembly aspects to it," said Mr. Schaal. "Much of my routine correspondence is generated by the data base. If I enter a new event from the patent office, it will ask me if I want to send a letter to my inventors, it will check to see whether they are still with Chevron or not, it will send the letter, and make a note that I sent a letter. It sends quarterly reports, in the form of individual letters to each inventor, to their manager, and to their vice president.

"My secretary is doing a lot less typing and a lot more photocopying," said Mr. Schaal. "With the same amount of effort, we can keep a lot more people informed of the status."

4th Dimension--for power users only

4th Dimension was the most powerful data base Mr. Schaal could find. "It's like dBASE IV in that it's a procedural data base, and those procedures can be subroutines, which can be incorporated within functions," he said. A second popular data base for Macintosh power users is Double Helix, which is more graphical, and easy to use, but "doesn't give the flexibility of the procedure language of 4th Dimension."

4th Dimension has modules for word processor, spreadsheet, graphics, drawing, and project planning. The word processor makes it easy to insert fields into mailmerge letters.

"It's more of a development tool," said Mr. Schaal. "I would not recommend it for people who are not power users. There are flat files for the Macintosh that are easier."

100 hours a year on customization and maintenance

"It takes a certain amount of development time, and upkeep time," said Mr. Schaal. "I spend about 100 hours a year to keep it up to date and print reports, and I've been working on this or something like it for about 4 years."

"What I got done by the first year was perfectly adequate, and I continued using it, improving it as I went," said Mr. Schaal. "A lot of it now is point-and-click."

"Instead of typing in, it gives me a menu," said Mr. Schaal. "It creates an array of all my inventors, and when I add an inventor, or subtract an inventor, it keeps that array up to date. So I can type the inventor's name one time, and never type it again. The patent numbers, the serial numbers, the key words, are all done by arrays. I use dialog boxes. It's tailored to my particular desires."

Letters, not tables

"Every time I turn it on, 4th Dimension looks to see whether it's a new week, or month, or quarter," said Mr. Schaal. "I have about 40 inventors, 10 managers and 10 vice presidents that all get individual letters, plus one to my manager.

"Every week I print out my docket for my own internal use, including a hot item list of things that must be done over the next month," said Mr. Schaal. "The docket prints out in three ways, by due date, by transaction type, and the special hot items, in paragraph format, for the one or two things that I have to immediately. The paragraph gives me enough information to know what it is," he said.

"Every month, it does some internal checks, to see if there are missing fields, and it shows me a list of all the people who owe me responses, and what they owe me, and allows me to choose the people that I want to send a trace letter to," said Mr. Schaal.

"Every quarter it turns out this massive mailing of letters to my manager, to the inventors, to their vice presidents, and to their managers," said Mr. Schaal. "Before I did this, we didn't keep the clients as informed as we did now."

"The paragraph would take the fields for U.S. serial number, the filing date, the type of application, the first inventor's name, the status, the title, and then a report description, which is a text field that tells what the invention is about," said Mr. Schaal. "I can create this stock paragraph right out of the data base, and put it into a letter."

"I don't print out reports, I print letters," said Mr. Schaal. "I'm trying to make it easy for the person to read."

3. Simple flat files on the PC

Q&A vs. Clipper at Blasingame, Burch

Blasingame, Burch, Garrard & Bryant is a litigation firm in Athens, Georgia, that handles thousands of asbestos defense cases as local counsel in nine states. They also handle medical malpractice defense, insurance defense, real estate and taxation. They have 21 attorneys, 26 paralegals and 15 secretaries. The firm uses a Novell 386 LAN, '386 IBM and NEC PCs, for all the staff and some of the attorneys. Their software includes WordPerfect, Folio Views, Lotus 1-2-3, and Lotus Agenda.

For complicated data bases--like document administration and conflicts--they use Clipper, says legal administrator Larry Green. For simple everyday data bases--like their closed case file, expert witness list, plaintiff list, and employee data base--Q&A can usually do the job, he says. Sometimes they develop data bases in Q&A, and move them to Clipper when they need advanced features.

Q&A is easy to learn, "and addresses about 95% of all of our data management problems," said Mr. Green. "People can generally pick up the basics of Q&A with 30 minutes of instruction, and with an hour can create simple data bases. If we need anything more sophisticated than Q&A can offer, generally we'll have them custom written"

In Clipper, however, their conflicts management system can be a front end for the document management system, and for the time and billing system, which is beyond the capabilities of Q&A. Clipper also allows more sophisticated searches and document management.

"The main thing is, whatever they use, they spend the least amount of time possible and give us the best product," said Mr. Green. "If it's something that could be programmed in Q&A, why sit down and write a complicated program in Clipper?"

Converting closed file system from Wang to Q&A

But why use a data base at all? Why not put your information in a word processing file, and search for it? Many people keep personal telephone lists that way--and it works. But it doesn't work for big, multi-user lists with critical information.

Before they moved it to Q&A, Blasingame, Burch used to keep their closed file records on a Wang word processing system. "As the file was closed, the secretary would make an entry into that closed file management system, noting the case name, case number, storage box number, and the location of the storage box," said Mr. Green.

"We had four distinct documents, as big as Wang would allow," said Mr. Green. "So if you were looking for a particular closed file, you had to go through each of the four files, and use the Wang search function." Some searches took 20 minutes. In Q&A, "I can search 20,000 records in a couple of seconds," he said.

But accuracy and control is more important than speed. "There were many times that we couldn't find files that we knew were there," said Mr. Green. They were forced to send a courier to look around the storage warehouse.

You can control entry into a data base, but you can't control entry into a big word processing file. "Whenever a secretary calls up that file, there's a possibility of accidentally deleting some lines," said Mr. Green, "and I suspect that's what happened."

"There were no control factors in terms of what information was put into that data base," said Mr. Green. "Each secretary could type any form of information into that data base. And there was no validation." For example, there was a field for the date the file was closed. "That could be a particularly useful piece of information, especially if that's the only thing you remember about the file," he said. A well-designed data base would only allow you to enter a date in the range of your recently-closed cases. A word processing file has no such control. "I've seen things entered in the year 2000 by mistake," he said.

Validation in entry screens

There are two ways to assure accurate data in the data base, said Mr. Green. One way is to create screens that restrict the entry of data to valid ranges. The other way, for a small data set, is to create menus that list all the valid choices, so that the operator merely has to pick the right one.

"It's important to design a data base entry screen that controls and validates the information," and restricts it to a valid range, said Mr. Green. For example, the screen should only allow the operator to enter document dates inside the range of documents of the case. The screen should validate the range of storage box numbers, so that, even if the operator makes a mistake, the storage box will still be in the same vicinity.

Some data bases, including Q&A 4.0, give you the ability to write your own help screens, said Mr. Green. He sets up help screens with menus listing the attorneys' names and initials. Q&A can convert initials to full names, so the operator need merely type the attorney's initials from the help screen. "If I type in the wrong initials, the machine beeps at me," he said. "In many cases you can get away with the data entry person not entering any data except the pick list and the enter key," said Mr. Green.

Legal memoranda data base

"Until recently we were keeping our legal memoranda on Q&A," said Mr. Green. The data base had fields for author's name, date, and keywords. So the attorney could search through the key word field for "slip" or "fall." A memo field had a narrative, but Q&A, like some other simple data bases, cannot search memo fields--which can be a major limitation. The full-featured data bases like Clipper, and a few simple data bases like askSAM, can search memo fields.

"You need to settle on some kind of standard key word system," said Mr. Green. "You may or may not have a pulldown menu, but you can't suffer people making up their own key words. I don't think any individual could create it himself. I'd use West's or something like that."

Firm employee data base

"We also have many administrative uses for data bases," said Mr. Green. "We maintain vital information and statistics on all employees with Q&A."

The employee data base has about 50 fields, including information the firm would need to get a quote for health insurance. It has about four screens, with a field for Social Security number, a field for birth date, a calculation field that calculates age, a field for the starting date, a calculation field that calculates tenure with the firm, fields for last salary review date, current salary, next salary review date, family or individual health care coverage, names and Social Security numbers of spouse and children, firm credit cards assigned, and parking slots assigned.

Q&A 4.0 allows different levels of access, so that the data base has basic information like names, addresses, and emergency phone numbers, available to all employees, and confidential information, which is restricted to certain classes of users. "Everybody has access to our personnel files, but they don't have access to every field in that file," said Mr. Green.

Conflicts data base

But some applications require data bases that are more powerful than Q&A. For custom work, like their conflicts system, they use the latest version of Clipper. Clipper can interface better with other systems, it can manage documents more efficiently, and it can use more sophisticated searches. For their document management system, they use Document Administrator, by Soft Solutions, which can do boolean searches or full text searches.

"We are in the midst of creating a conflicts data base, and it's just too involved for Q&A," said Mr. Green.

"Our conflicts data base is extremely fast, because it's written for that sole purpose," said Mr. Green. "This program brings up several different records at one time, opens several different files, and scans several different files, in fractions of seconds. We have 10-15,000 closed asbestos files alone. The conflicts file has to have the name of everybody we ever dealt with."

"We represent several banks," said Mr. Green. "You not only want to check with the bank's name, you want to check with board of directors. Clearly you don't want to sue anybody on the board. You don't want to sue any of the bank's employees, so you punch in all the employees."

Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) can be elusive, warned Mr. Green. Blasingame, Burch represents several manufacturers. Another firm represented a manufacturer that supplied 28 companies with spray paint under 28 different labels, he said. The firm received a walk-in case from a woman who lost sight in her eyes after a spray paint can burst, and the firm was preparing to sue the company on the label. The client was the OEM. "The only way they caught it was by circulating the new case list," said Mr. Green. One of the old-timers said, "That paint name sounds familiar, I don't know where, but you got to check it out."

"In our firm, the second line of defense was reading the dockets," said Mr. Green. "All of our attorneys meet every Monday morning to review every case that has come up every week. You can't depend on your computer to find conflicts for you. Circulating a new case list is mandatory."

"Our conflicts data base has a very sophisticated soundex, and it's not the kind of thing Q&A was designed to handle," said Mr. Green. "Later we will integrate this system with our accounting system."

Soundexes for alternative spellings

Soundexes and hash totals are two more ways of managing errors.

Dealing with names, their legitimate variations and misspellings is major task of data base design, explained Mr. Green. A name may appear in one form on a business card, a second form on a letter, and third form in a directory. There must be some provision for nicknames, such as the pairs William/Bill, Richard/Dick. Last names like Cohn/Kohn/Cohen/Cohan or Macintosh/McIntosh can be misspelled. Programs that find variations are called soundexes. Soundexes are sometimes packaged with the program, and sometimes purchased separately, and a good soundex or fuzzy search program can make a big difference in a data base's utility for a lawyer. For example, Chaim Caron, a Manhattan, New York, FoxPro programmer, doesn't use the FoxPro soundex, but instead substitutes the PhDbase phonetic searching, from Korenthal Associates, New York.

Hash lists verify numbers

"When you're dealing with numbers, you can run hash totals," said Mr. Green. A hash total is a total that might be meaningless by itself, such as a total of a list of Social Security numbers, but which can be double-checked against another total of the same numbers for verification. You would enter data from attorney's hand-written time sheets into a billing program. On an adding machine, you would total each of the fields. Then you would compare them. "A good timekeeping system would run hash numbers of client numbers, matter numbers, hours, attorney codes, and activity codes," he said. It means keyboarding the same information twice, but "if you want as error-free data entry as possible, that's the way you do it," he said.

4. Powerful relational DBs on the PC

Paradox at Smith, Haughey

Smith, Haughey, Rice & Roegge is a 60-lawyer firm in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with two satellite offices. They have about 100 PCs, and 2 gigabytes on-line storage, with over 100,000 documents actively maintained, said Mike Barkley, Manager of Information Systems. They use several relational data bases for work scheduling, client contacts, calendaring and other applications.

Scheduling is done automatically, said Mr. Barkley. "A secretary scheduling a deposition triggers all the documentation and paperwork automatically." The dates flow into the attorneys' calendars, and each attorney gets a weekly calendar printout. Another data base helps secretaries share their workload.

"I wouldn't recommend that a small firm do what we do," said Mr. Barkley. A system like this requires a dedicated data processing person on staff. "Can you adjust your life to fit the off-the-shelf product?" he asks. Lawyers tend to want to do things their own way, but packages from the major vendors can't be modified to meet those individual needs. You can develop a data base in-house, which is costly, but gives you exactly what you want.

Why Paradox?

A law firm could use any major off-the-shelf relational data base, said Mr. Barkley. "I am familiar with dBASE, R:BASE, and FoxPro," he said. "They all have their pros and cons. dBASE is the premiere data base. Paradox is easier to use, learn and understand, and it's a lot simpler" than other relational data bases, he believes, although it's a bit slower. The major problem with Paradox, for law firms, was that fields were limited to 250 characters, but in the new Paradox 4.0, the memo fields can be virtually unlimited (256 MB), and can incorporate WordPerfect documents.

The Firm: A relational client data base

"We have one huge data base for clients, where we do all of our marketing and client contact work, and use Paradox to keep track of all of our client lists," said Mr. Barkley. The data base can generate mailing lists for the firm's newsletters, and invitations to firm parties. An attorney can generate a list of business clients or liability clients, or clients who bill a certain amount, or clients who haven't had any work done in a while.

The data base is named, with tongue-in-cheek seriousness, "The Firm".

As a relational data base, The Firm has a master record and several detail records, Mr. Barkley explained.

The master record includes fields for name, address, parent company, matter, person to contact, CPA firm, CPA contact, client number (which keys to the accounting system), two phone numbers, fax number, federal ID, SIC code, NAIC (insurance) code, lawyer responsible, billing lawyer, and rates.

One detail record deals with the matter. Its fields list the name of the matter file, the date the file was opened, the lawyer responsible, the branch of the firm, and the areas of law, said Mr. Barkley. There is a memo field with comments.

Another detail record is the client contact record, which is used for marketing, said Mr. Barkley. One client organization can have fields for 20 or 30 people contacts, with the title and phone numbers for each. This record has marketing material, and generates mailing lists for Smith, Haughey's newsletter, and invitations for events like the Christmas party and golf outings.

"The Firm" data base will eventually be integrated into the billing computer, said Mr. Barkley.

Mr. Barkley spent about "30 person-days over six months" to develop "The Firm" data base. "If you know how to program, it's not difficult, but if you don't I could see it being a real bear," he said. "We have a lot of expertise in-house."

Hot Tapes: Distributing secretarial work

Another data base is called "Hot Tapes," which is used to schedule and share work. The data base is on the network, and is used to track folders, which is the module of work at Smith, Haughey. A folder will typically have transcription tapes, but can have any other standard secretarial assignment.

"When a secretary gets work, she puts it on the system," said Mr. Barkley. "Every job has a sequential record. Every job has a deadline. Every job is in a priority sequence, which the computer generates according to how close it is to the deadline. Every job has an estimate of the time it should take."

When a secretary becomes overload with work, she can broadcast a message, "Subject: Help," on the electronic mail system, to groups within her department, within the office, or within all three branches around the state. Every secretary's terminal in that group beeps, and, if another secretary is free, she can respond to it.

Mr. Barkley estimates that he spent 90 days putting together the schedule system in Paradox.

This system works well because it fits into the firm culture. Before the computer, if someone needed help, they would post a message, "I need help," on the lunchroom bulletin board, Mr. Barkley explained. He called up the "Help" messages on his terminal. "Anyone going to our Travers City office?" read one. "I have a packet that needs to be delivered to this lawyer at our Travers City office."

Prior to installing the "Hot Tapes" data base, "our overtime was out of control, and we had a lot of temps taking care of crisis jobs," said Mr. Barkley. "That's been almost completely eliminated."

It's important that the secretaries feel the system is helping them, rather than turning their office into an electronic sweatshop, said Mr. Barkley. "We had a great sensitivity to letting the individuals who do this work schedule and manage this work among themselves. We've created a better feeling among the staff because people feel they have someone to turn to. We've never used this system as a bludgeon. If we improve productivity, that moves to the bottom line in terms of benefits, better pay, and general happiness."

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