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International Edition

Netting the prize

A recurring point of discussion and major concern from the past 12 months or so has been the issue of slashed marketing budgets and how deeply this might impact website operations. While fee earners are being made redundant at all levels and across most practice areas, it seems slightly trivial to talk about the erosion of marketing budgets, yet there are serious consequences to this action.
6 minute read

International Edition

Boost your cable power

The current recession has become infamous for its speed and bruising impact and the legal sector is feeling the pain. Even major City law firms, renowned for stability, are reporting significant loss of business and many have already made cuts or begun redundancy consultations.This follows a period of real change in the sector in the past decade with the rise of more regional and global firms. As they go international, law firms need to change the way they operate, moving from individual outfits to cohesive international brands.
4 minute read

International Edition

Litigation support and e-discovery: Where lawyers fear to tread

Getting to grips with the disclosure of electronic documents is crucially important for every litigator. E-discovery is more than just a buzz phrase; it plays a key role in many cases. When done properly it can be the key that unlocks a case, and can save significant time and costs for your client. When done badly it can have disastrous consequences. Recent case law provides lawyers with a simple message: every party must give proper consideration to e-discovery or face adverse consequences if they do not. In this article we look at the basic rules, the new case law and provide some practical tips. We also ask the following difficult question: what do you need to know about IT to be a good litigator?
10 minute read

International Edition

Litigation support and e-discovery: Language barrier

Litigation and arbitration cases are increasingly becoming global in nature, and data may come from a variety of countries. There is a mixture of legislative jurisdictions involved as well as a myriad of languages and cultures - including vast differences in the maturity of attitudes towards e-discovery. In an increasingly integrated global community, with cross-border cases ever more frequent, the process of disclosure grows more complex. Documents created in any country and any language can be, and increasingly are, relevant to lawsuits, investigations or regulatory matters. Consequently, legal teams need to be fully aware of how to best equip themselves for the challenge of dealing with multilingual forms of evidence.
9 minute read

International Edition

Litigation support and e-discovery: A clear path

When The Ramones pleaded to be given "Shock Treatment", I somehow doubt that they were presciently pleading for help with project management issues in e-discovery. But I sense that shock is a common ailment for which some lawyers crave treatment. That shock has common symptoms: projects delivered late; inadequate budgetary reporting; insufficient explanation of problems; and multiple reporting lines. Indeed, this seems to be a global rather than a UK problem: recent Socha-Gelbmann surveys in the US reach similar conclusions.
9 minute read

International Edition

Litigation support and e-discovery: Sooner rather than later

The English Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) were amended in 2005 to give more clarity in respect of electronic discovery (ED), yet it was some three years later before a substantive judgment was given in this area. In Digicel v Cable & Wireless, Mr Justice Morgan highlighted the fact that the parties had not conducted a case management conference to address the subject of ED - as defined in the revised CPR 31. Clearly, most of the issues in the case should have been discussed and resolved at this stage rather than in court.The legal team spent 6,700 hours systematically reviewing around 1,140,000 electronic documents and emails. They determined that about 5,200 were relevant at a cost of around £2m. Mr Justice Morgan determined that "the rules do not require that no stone should be left unturned. This may mean that a relevant document, even 'a smoking gun' is not found. This attitude is justified by considerations of proportionality".
9 minute read

International Edition

Litigation support and e-discovery: Entering the spotlight

During the past six months we have met with mor than 100 law firms in the UK to discuss their current approach to e-discovery, their anticipated requirements in the context of the current economic climate and their expectation of increasing levels of disputes. We have concluded that the use of e-discovery technology for UK law has reached a tipping point whereby it will become normal practice to use e-discovery technology in relation to even relatively low value disputes.
8 minute read

International Edition

Management: Greasing the training wheels

In response to constrained budgets for 2009-10, most learning and development teams have focused on real and immediate needs and driving down costs. This has most commonly meant that career-critical training programmes have remained sacrosanct, attendances at external conferences require strong justification and the use of external training providers has been significantly curtailed.
5 minute read

International Edition

Management: Career makeover

As the effects of the economic slowdown take their toll on all aspects of UK industry, an increasingly negative atmosphere has begun to pervade the legal workplace. In a lot of firms, staff may well feel insecure about their position and feel the need to show their skills to the best of their ability, in order to become indispensable to the business and avoid possible threat of redundancy.
6 minute read

International Edition

Management: Ready, set, audit!

When law firms first considered the move to limited liability partnership (LLP) status, one of the barriers cited was, somewhat euphemistically, 'disclosure'. In reality this was the disclosure of partners' remuneration. Other aspects of disclosure were either just accepted or, possibly, not contemplated at all.
6 minute read

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Legal Speak is a weekly podcast that makes sense of what’s happening in the legal industry.

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