My article Uncovering the Mysteries of Disclosure, written for Computers & Law, the magazine of the Society for Computers & Law, has now been made accessible to all on the SCL web site. It can be found here.

The theme of the article is that providers of litigation software and services could make themselves more accessible to the market by packaging the provision of basic electronic Disclosure for routine cases, with more transparent pricing.

There is a summary of the article here. This post picks up on some feedback I have had on it, from a user concerned (as they all are) at the prohibitive cost of setting up an electronic review database in order to give initial advice. It is one thing to invest in an action to which you are committed, but quite another to put money into a case which may never get beyond the initial advice stage. That initial advice would, however, be much better informed if the lawyer were able to review it electronically.

It is not my case that the big providers are over-priced for what they offer – they seem to have plenty of takers for their services at their current prices – but that there is room for a different tier of services. This splits into two different facets, one to do with the audience – first-time buyers of litigation services – and one related to the immediate purpose of the Disclosure exercise.

My article was mainly concerned with the audience, and suggested that people who were converted to the idea of e-Disclosure for routine cases were deterred from taking active steps to adopt it by a lack of information relevant to them. It was hard to find as much as a simple list of suppliers, still less get a rough idea as to what the cost might be.

The second concept – that the purpose of the Disclosure exercise should affect its cost – is not a new one to those skilled in this area but is apt to confuse newcomers already baffled by lack of hard information. The point concerns the quality of documents data. A first-pass review of the documents in order to advise the client whether to bring or defend proceedings does not necessarily require a high level of quality and polish, whereas the data needed to give proper Disclosure and to run towards trial does.

Could litigation support providers offer a quick, lower quality, but “good enough” pass through the data which would allow a proper review by the lawyers and which could be polished up if the case did in fact proceed? And would there be a significant saving on the first electronic pass relative to the immediate value to justify the subsequent cost of cleaning up the data later?

This warrants a separate article which will follow shortly. Meanwhile, if you have views on this subject, please contact me using the form below.

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