eDisclosure Information Project

I have not had the chance to read it yet, but Practice Direction (Electronic Working Pilot Scheme) supplementing rule 5.5 of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 provides for a pilot scheme by which, in the circumstances set out in the practice direction, proceedings may be started and all subsequent steps may be taken electronically (“Electronic Working”).

The pilot runs from 1 April to 31 March 2010, applies to claims started on or after 1st April 2009, and will operate in the Admiralty, Commercial and London Mercantile Courts of the High Court at the Royal Courts of Justice, with the possibility of extending the operation of the pilot scheme to other courts.

This looks one of the more interesting developments since the CPR was launched, when the electronic filing functions now being piloted were (or so it seemed) muddled in the official mind with the very different concept of electronic disclosure of documents between parties under Part 31 CPR.

More when I have had the chnace to read it properly.

Home

The e-discovery 2.0 blog scored an exclusive with a recent post. Under the heading Government Launches Bold New Recovery Effort, it reported the nationalisation of the US electronic discovery industry. A new authority, the National Electronic Discovery Institute (NERDI) was apparently set up with a new portal at EDiscovery.gov with effect from 1 April. In response, the Socha-Gelbmann Top 5 has consolidated under the name ClearGuideAutoKrolLexFTios.

It is faintly disturbing that this could easily be read from top to bottom without a blink. Tom Lehrer famously said that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger made satire obsolete.  How can a mere spoof compete with the daily news at the moment? How about “Home Secretary claims 88p bath plug and her family’s porn viewing from taxpayer”? That particular (true) item is rivalled only by one yet more risible from a while back: “Brown appoints Jacquie Smith as Home Secretary”.  How funny is that? (not very, actually, if you value liberty, privacy and the right to sleep soundly at night, but that is for another article). Continue reading →

My primary topic, electronic discovery or electronic disclosure, is a sub-set of a wider subject – more than one wider subject, indeed. It is important as a matter of simple business efficiency; it is critical to the subject of access to justice, which matters as much to large corporations as it does to ordinary individuals; and it is fascinating (to me anyway) as an example of technology being applied to move the world on. It is not the pure science – my Grade 9 in Physics with Chemistry O Level was well-deserved – but the conjunction of human endeavour and technology being applied to practical problems which interests me. I may describe some of the e-disclosure applications as “near-magical in their capabilities”, but I stress also that the most important technology lies between your ears.

I have had a couple of days away. If what you come here for is undiluted e-disclosure then you will have to wait – there are posts coming up on subjects as narrow and varied as TREC and search technology, on privacy and German works councils, on Special Masters and on other e-discovery topics. Today concerns wider matters, although the theme – that you can do almost anything if you really want to and have the tools to do it – applies as much to managing litigation as it did to the esoteric examples which have come my way in the past few days. Continue reading →

Hector Sants, Chief Executive of the FSA, made two strong speeches last week. In one he blamed Gordon Brown for his contribution to the economic crisis. In the other he warned of a tough new attitude to regulation which ought to focus minds somewhat.

“It is quiet out there. Too quiet”. I am not sure whence I get this expression, with its intimation of pending violent attack. It could have been in one of those novels of war or Empire which I read as a child – about Hornblower or Richard Hannay or, later, of Flashman; it might have come from one of the old war films, with John Mills peering across the trenches, or scanning an empty sea or sky for the threatening Hun; perhaps it was in a Western, as John Wayne’s instincts told him that a cloud of arrows could be expected anytime soon. These stories often include a powerful but evil figure whose outward success conceals a past which is uncovered in the closing chapter or the last reel. His reputation might, for example, have depended on an alleged “economic miracle” which is shown to have been a sham, bringing misery for millions as it fails.

This sense that something is about to happen has been hanging over those whose business involves litigation and regulatory or internal investigations. The battle analogy is an apt one. Some of the units have been fighting hard since the economic “war” began; others have seen their numbers thinned out as they wait for the coming conflict. As in all the most gripping war stories, the attack is expected on more than one front.

One of those is litigation. The lull in the UK has lasted for ten long years. The CPR achieved its object of persuading parties out of the court system not, as was intended, by encouraging parties down the flower-strewn path to mediation but by making it too expensive to litigate. There is no one baddy here, but several: we can blame the government for its neglect of civil justice and its contempt for that admirable principle of “access to justice” which it mouthed even as it hiked court fees and cut Legal Aid; we can suggest that the rules and those who administer them have paid excessive attention to encouraging settlement and too little to the basic mechanics of case management; we can point to lawyers whose disdain for cutting the hours spent has been obscured by complaints about the rates per hour; not least we can point to clients who produce sow’s ear data and whine about the cost of turning it into silk purse evidence. Continue reading →

We have certain expectations of people based on what we have seen or heard of them in the past. Mention a name and you can picture a context. Take Nigel Murray of Trilantic, for example. What comes to mind? Sitting expansively in a bar with a beer in hand, going outside every so often for a cigarette. That is what he was doing when I saw him last night, anyway, much as he has done for the 15 years or so that I have known him. I did once see him run, but that was across a pavement to a cab in the rain, so barely counts as an exception to the general rule.

Seeing someone out of context is a shock to the system, like finding whisky in your teacup or seeing a judge in a lap-dancing club – possible but unlikely, you would think. How about Nigel Murray cycling 350 miles across Northern France over five days in May?  Sounds barely credible somehow. Continue reading →

I have updated my list of LegalTech events which involve a UK supplier, a UK speaker or are otherwise of interest.

I see that I am now down to speak on four panels on Tuesday, one for LDSI, two for Autonomy and one for Trilantic.

More will follow as session organisers update their session information.

Home

This morning’s newspaper has dramatic photographs of the ditched US Airways plane floating in the Hudson River in New York – just what you want to see a few days before you set off for New York by air.

The plane hit the water just by 47th Street, the very street where my hotel is booked. One would not wish a plane crash on anyone, but if it had to happen, where better than just at the end of the street where you are staying?

It would obviously be very cold, and slightly tiresome to lose all one’s luggage, but BA will probably lose the luggage anyway. I would be spared the long wait in the immigration hall and the taxi flog from JFK to Manhattan. Quite what the hotel would make of it I am not sure if one appeared at the door dripping wet and without any bags. Just hope the credit card still works.

Home

You can just see from this photograph taken yesterday that the boilers are still working at Canary Wharf and that public transport – the brightly-lit train running across the bottom of the picture – is still functioning more or less (“functioning more or less”  being as good as it got even in the boom years).

You can read this how you like really – that the City looks much as it always did despite everything, or that this is an echo of that famous photograph of  St Paul’s in the Blitz, or that London is a harsh, grey shadow of its former self. It feels pretty busy to me.

Home