As the United Kingdom plans its exit from the European Union, dedicating time to fine tune legal and compliance discovery processes with multilingual capabilities will be increasingly important to companies and their outside counsel.
It’s expected that the U.K.’s historic referendum to leave the EU will result in more cross-border litigation, investigations and regulatory oversight for U.S. and U.K.-based businesses with international operations due to additional complexities brought on by the farewell. Consequently, a potential influx of multilingual-document reviews await legal counsel. Here are a few reasons why:
• Brexit could have some impact on the enforceability of contracts governed under English law, and many companies are considering reviews of material contracts where they are likely to include provisions that may be triggered by Brexit.
• For financial institutions, there may be increased regulatory implications necessitating reviews.
• From an intellectual property perspective, there is uncertainty surrounding the Unified Patent Court system, as Brexit signals an end to the U.K.’s involvement in this “one stop shop” system, possibly weakening the attraction of U.K. courts as the venue to settle patent disputes.
• While English is the first choice for EU institutions, no country other than the U.K. has it registered as its primary language. Regulations (by unanimous EU adoption) would have to thus be changed in EU states to maintain the language, challenging the current ubiquity of English within EU government institutions and corporations.
