The Law Society of Hong Kong has revamped its website, Hong Kong Lawyer, and to good effect. UK lawyers will find it all very familiar, with (as I write) recent articles about Calderbank offers and other things inherited or substantially copied from English law and procedure.
Among recent articles is one called Pyrrho Investments: English Predictive Coding Case Strikes New Balance in E-Discovery by Sebastian Ko and Michael Yuen of Epiq in Hong Kong.
English and Hong Kong civil procedure share many points of compatibility, and provide fertile legal environments to foster the use of predictive coding. This is partly because Hong Kong has substantially borrowed relevant parts of UK civil procedure as it affects discovery (not least Practice Direction 31B which turns up in modified form as Hong Kong practice direction SL 1.2), but also because of the emphasis on the requirement that discovery must be “proportionate, economical and relevant”. These points matter more than precedent in this context.
The Epiq article explains the Hong Kong context, with the conclusion
Overall, Pyrrho is welcome news for Hong Kong where external and in-house legal teams are generally smaller than their counterparts in the US and the UK and have to do more with less.
eDisclosure Information Project 