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1975 Army Law. 17 (1975)
Title Filing: A System of Maintaining the Military Lawyer's Professional Papers

handle is hein.journals/armylaw1975 and id is 205 raw text is: DA Pam 27-50-30 17 Title Filing: A System of Maintaining the Military Lawyer's Professional Papers By: Captain Henry J. Hogan, III, JAGC, Presidio of San Francisco, California The maintenance of professional papers is certainly not the most pressing problem weigh- ing upon the minds of military attorneys but it is nonetheless one worthy of comment. In fact, these comments come at the suggestion of those who have seen my personal system of filing professional papers and felt it worthy of attention. This system that I endeavor to describe employs two widely known methods of legal indexing, modified to accept materials from the JAG practice. Sometime early in my JAG career I deter- mined that much of my work required travel- ling research paths I had been over before. The problem was how to organize previously ac- quired materials in a fashion that combined the qualities of immediate access, mobility, protec- tion and simplicity of operation. I believe there is a need for a uniform system o( organizing the papers, briefs, notes, memoranda of law, professional articles, and bibliographies that the individual JA collects in the course of his practice. There are other more sophisticated indexing systems demanding space and supplies com- plete with cross-referencing codes. However, I simply never had the time or the desire to do much more than what this TITLE filing I now use calls for. It is possible to expand on what I have done and probably make it as complex as the individual feels he needs. I kept my files simple because I don't like filing. The net result of title filing is a clutter-free office with files full of current usable materials that I have read. In originally organizing the system it was necessary to dissect the JAG practice and to identify its various elements. I have defined nine different parts of the practice which I have termed TITLES. These TITLES are the major classifications into which a piece of material is initially sorted, e.g. Environ- mental Law, Procurement, etc. After the material has been identified under the appro- priate TITLE, it is then sorted into the most applicable TOPIC. The TOPICS are words and phrases of military and administrative law which have been extracted from handbooks, various military legal services regularly dis- tributed and legal research texts. The system utilizes this catalogue of military and adminis- trative law related TOPICS and is really nothing more inventive than tailoring the headnote or topic method of legal research to the military practice. Perhaps the best way to explain the system is to describe the process used to file a piece of material. The sample material here will be an outline of the remarks made by Dr. Russell S. Fisher, Chief Medical Examiner for the State of Maryland. His presentation, Determining the Cause of Death in Suspected Criminal Homicide Cases, was given to the Short Course for Prosecuting Attorneys in North- western University. It is a valuable outline of medicolegal pathology. Without reading it and only knowing the name it can be properly TITLED in the system under that segment of the JAG practice which I have labeled Crim- inal Law and Military Justice. After reading the contents the appropriate words and phrases TOPIC must then be chosen. A re- view of the catalogue of TOPICS under that TITLE offers the selection: Homicide, Ex- pert Evidence or Murder. After selecting Homicide and then placing an identifiable H on the cover page of the outline it may be placed in a file separator. It is then necessary to prepare a 3 x 5 card labeled Homicide and copy the TITLE onto the card. A zealot would no doubt prepare separate 3 x 5's for Expert Evidence and Murder upon which would then be marked see Homicide. I believe this wastes times, sacrifices simplicity and clutters the index with 3 x 5 cards. The result of this work is that filed copies have been read, labeled under the proper JAG practice TITLE and an index card has been prepared under the applicable heading for quick reference. I am convinced that the most attractive motivation to employing this system is that it gets the material out of sight and yet the same material Cl10 i

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