Abstract: A litigation support system and method in which information regarding documents and other items of evidence are stored in record fields of an electronic database using an optical scanning mechanism with the ability to scan bar-codes or other indicia. By using a bar-code to generate a single relation among databases as well as using bar-code authority lists for entries into the disclosed litigation support computer system, significant improvement in both the speed of coding documents or other items of evidence as well as the accuracy of such coding is greatly enhanced.