Litigation services provider Legal Inc has linked up with e-disclosure consultant Andrew Haslam of Allvision. Andrew Haslam will work on the design and delivery of disclosure services and projects and will provide strategic consultancy and business development advice.

Both are well thought-of in the litigation services market – Legal Inc won the 2008 Electronic Disclosure support/service provider category of the Legal Technology Awards and Andrew Haslam is one of the UK’s most experienced electronic disclosure consultants. The deal makes him available to Legal Inc for one day per week.

The UK litigation services market offers a wide choice to would-be users, from those who offer their own applications to those who, like Legal Inc, are supplier agnostic. Any sensible buyer of services will look at more than one supplier and, as with financial services, should perhaps include at least one of each type – the “own brand” and the “supplier agnostic” on their shortlist. They will also look not just at the products and services on offer but at the people with whom they will be working.

I know Lisa Burton of Legal Inc mainly because Legal Inc (along with Millnet) are sponsors of the Law Society e-disclosure seminars which I deliver and which are due to re-start around the country shortly. Andrew has been an enthusiastic supporter of the e-Disclosure Information Project since it began. Both are approachable and likeable.

This will shortly come to matter even more than hitherto. I reported yesterday (Getting expert search evidence in front of the court) on the very recent judgment in Abela and others v Hammonds. This, along with the Digicel and Hedrich judgments, will give practitioners a very real incentive to take advice on handling electronic documents for disclosure in accordance with the rules. Many of those will be new to the subject, and the fact that suppliers are likeable as well as competent will be important. Most of them are both of these things – the ones I come across anyway.

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