By the spring of 1983, Yannacone had organized more than 1200 law firms throughout the United States, Canada, and Australia to manage the growing number of agent orange victims and their families who were joining the class-action. The local law firms managed the cases and prepared the claim for damages on behalf of each of the individual veterans and their families who had joined the class action. At that time, communication was by telephone and the United States Postal Service first class mail. A high-speed modem operated at only 1200 baud and there was no Internet as we know it today. Email was limited to a few federal government laboratories involved with national security issues and research was conducted in libraries containing thousands of volumes. Lexis, Nexis, and Westlaw were primitive and in many cases not as effective as research in a library filled with law books.

The following article from Trial, the monthly journal of the American Trial Lawyers Association (ATLA) describes the effort as it was building.

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