eDisclosure Information Project

What will recession do for civil justice?

Posted on October 24, 2008 by Chris Dale

I nearly did Gordon Brown an injustice last night. My notes for a talk to be given in Birmingham included the observation that “our weasel-worded Prime Minister has not yet found the guts to admit that we are in or heading for recession”. Fortunately, the subject came up in the pre-seminar drinks, and someone drew my attention to the fact that our weasel-worded Prime Minister had in fact summoned the courage to use the R-word the previous day.

I am a newspaper junkie, which is subtly different from being a news junkie. I do not much mind about being bang up to date with the news, but no copy of the Times leaves the house without my reading it from cover to cover – well not the sport obviously or the fashion, but most of the rest. Having been off doing my Phileas Fogg bit (I was at e-disclosure conferences in both Sydney and Washington the previous week), I have a large backlog of newspapers to read, and keeping up to date has suffered as a result.

It is rather odd, in fact, reading old papers over a week as volatile as that one, particularly as I read them in no particular order. It was not just that share prices were going up and down like an intern’s knickers. There were old stories coming round again, and I began to think that I had fallen into a newspaper time-warp. Here is the Labour party finally fulfilling its 1931 plan to nationalise the banks (good to know that Labour keeps some of its promises anyway, even if it takes a while). And there is Peter Mandelson accepting hospitality from a rich foreigner just before the foreigner gets a valuable trade concession. No connection at all, says Mandy and, of course, we have to believe him, just as we had to believe Tony Blair when he said that he knew nothing about the Bernie Ecclestone £1 million loan and its intimate connection, in terms of timeliness at least, with the relaxation of the tobacco advertising ban. Turn the page – oh, there is that story back again. It seems that when Teflon Tone said white was white on that occasion, what he meant was, um, the opposite. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Civil justice, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Judges, Litigation Readiness, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Going the extra mile to understand discovery

Posted on October 22, 2008 by Chris Dale

It takes roughly twice as long to travel from Sydney to London via Washington as it does to fly directly eastbound. I could have been home in Oxford in about half of the 30 or so hours of travelling time involved in the long hop across the International Date Line, the arrival in Los Angeles five hours before I left Sydney, the run between terminals at LAX, the airborne cattle truck which took me across the USA, the flog into Washington from Dulles Airport and, two days later, the red-eye back to London. It also cost me a fair amount of money.

The main draw was a keynote speech by US Magistrate Judge John Facciola at the Masters Conference in Washington. There was plenty else worth being at the Masters Conference for, but this was why I came. It was worth it. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Masters Conference | Leave a comment

Leadership in litigation

Posted on October 22, 2008 by Chris Dale

This is a report of a speech given by US Magistrate Judge John Facciola at the Masters Conference in Washington on 17 October 2008. Its theme was leadership. Whatever view UK lawyers and judges may take about US litigation discovery, this thoughtful survey has much of value for a UK audience

Judge Facciola began by holding up FDR (for you Brits, that is Franklin D Roosevelt, the architect of the New Deal in the Depression of the 1930s) as the model for leadership. He went on to give us one modern-day example of fine leadership, and several where leadership was seriously lacking. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Courts, Discovery, Document Retention, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Litigation, Litigation Readiness, Masters Conference | Leave a comment

Judging the importance of form over function

Posted on October 21, 2008 by Chris Dale

The parties are gathered for a Case Management Conference. It has been the diary for some time, and no-one is in any doubt as to the time, date, place or nature of the business to be discussed. The summons is passed across to the judge. There is a purely technical defect on its face. Go away, says the judge, and come back when you are properly ready to present the application to the court.

Did you hear my scream when I was told that story last night? Perhaps I managed to suppress it, biting my knuckles to prevent it echoing round Aldgate.

I will not tell you who it was or what level of judge he was since it is the attitude which I am attacking not the person. I have not looked up whether the point at issue is in fact a requirement nor what the penalty is – let us assume that it is required and that a spell in the Tower is the usual punishment, so that the parties were lucky to be sent away with nothing but a wasted morning, a few thousand pounds in lost costs and a delay in getting the case moving. What does this do for the overriding objective? Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Litigation | Leave a comment

Discovery of Australian and US connections

Posted on October 19, 2008 by Chris Dale

The purpose of the e-Disclosure Information Project is to assimilate and disseminate information about electronic discovery / disclosure. As you may conclude from my silence on this site for a fortnight, I have been doing more assimilating and less dissemination recently. Apart from one article part-drafted on the floor at dawn between flights at Kuala Lumpur airport, my output has been zero. The inputs, however, are considerable, and it will take a while to record them all. This article is a summary which will be followed by more specific articles. Its theme is collaboration between the thought-leaders in those common law jurisdictions which rely on the exchange of electronic documents in the search for justice.

KL was a staging-post en route for Sydney, where I was booked to speak at the Ark Group conference Preparing your Organisation for eDiscovery. From there I flew to Washington for the Masters Conference. My subject in Sydney was Responsibility for electronic disclosure, which surveyed every level from the state’s duty to provide an efficient forum for commercial disputes down to the individual duties of lawyers, clients and judges to manage cases and the documents needed as evidence in them. The main draw in Washington was a keynote speech by US Magistrate Judge John Facciola which took the same theme to a very much higher level, as I will report separately. Continue reading →

Posted in Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, EDRM, Electronic disclosure, Litigation, Litigation Support, Part 31 CPR | Leave a comment

Take the best and discard the worst from US litigation

Posted on October 4, 2008 by Chris Dale

The Vikings brought with them some habits which were deplored by their hosts, but they also brought technology which we turned to our advantage. We do not much like some of the practices in US civil courts, but we can certainly use the technology which has been honed in them

On 8 June 793, the first Viking long-ships appeared off the coast of Britain – “ravages of heathen men” said the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, which had recently predicted some such cataclysm. The Vikings did a bit of raping and pillaging and pushed off home. The next year they were back, but were beaten off, retiring hurt with their leader dead, many drowned in a storm and others killed on landing.

Their technology, particularly in ship-building, was way ahead of its time, and improved rapidly to reflect the experience of the sailors and as an aid to the rough and tumble of their work. Not only were the ships able to face the roughest storms, but they had shallow draughts and were light enough to carry, both useful developments which were enhanced to cope with their raids. Nor were their victims an uncivilised and impoverished race – the visitors would hardly have bothered to keep coming back if they had not hoped to profit from it and, however attractive the ladies of the North-East, their charms hardly warranted a risky annual journey. Continue reading →

Posted in Attenex, Case Management, Clearwell, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Ernst & Young, FRCP, KCura, KPMG, Legal Technology, Litigation, Litigation Support, Part 31 CPR | Leave a comment

Jersey Appeal Court to go paperless

Posted on September 24, 2008 by Chris Dale

The Jersey Appeal Court aims to pilot a project before the end of year under which an appeal will be heard without any use of paper. The long-term strategy in Jersey has long included this idea, but practitioners seem to have been taken by surprise when the Bailiff announced the plan in his speech to open the new term on 15 September.

The speech in fact refers only to authorities and submissions, and the passage concludes by saying

If successful, the pilot will be repeated in the Royal Court next year, and that will lead in short order to the ability to file pleadings and other documentation with the Judicial Greffe electronically.

I am not sure that litigation support providers should be racing across the Channel just yet, as I heard someone suggest a few days ago. I would, however, be interested to know how the experiment goes.

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Posted in Court Rules, Courts, Paperless court | Leave a comment

Another Trilantic anniversary

Posted on September 22, 2008 by Chris Dale

Corporate birthdays are generally of less significance than human ones, although Anacomp is rightly making much of the fact that it has been in data storage for 40 years. In general, this is a young industry, and few companies can yet claim a decade.

I bring up the subject of Trilantic’s birthday because it seems to have been around forever and yet has just celebrated its third anniversary. MD Nigel Murray, of course, has been around for ever – I misread a press release of his recently as saying that he was a “25 year-old veteran” which seemed unlikely, if only because I have known him in the industry for what seems like most of 25 years. It was in fact “25-year veteran”.

Nigel was host at a party following on from the Legal Week Litigation Forum last week which included a good mix of those who had been at the conference and Trilantic’s own guests.

It is interesting to speculate as to who will still be with us in, say, five years’ time, and what new players will have made their mark. At ILTA in Dallas last month I saw booths bearing names which I had never heard of. One or two will break through in this expanding market; some will fizzle out quickly.

Trilantic is likely to be a stayer.

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Posted in Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Trilantic | Leave a comment

Masters Conference Programme

Posted on September 22, 2008 by Chris Dale

I now have the full programme for the Masters Conference in Washington on 16-17 October.

One session, I see, is led by both John Facciola and Paul Grimm, the two US Magistrate Judges whose Opinions on search have shaken up the US e-disclosure world, with repercussions, I think for us. Former US Magistrate Judge Ron Hedges is with them, one of the joint authors of the eDiscovery Guide for Federal Judges. I want to do a UK equivalent next year.

Other names on the list include Tom Allman, Patrick Oot, and Anne Kershaw, plus our own Nigel Murray of Trilantic.

All I have got to do, as I have observed before, is to get my head round the logistics of attending conferences in Sydney and Washington in the same week.

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Posted in Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Anacomp partners with Hobs Legal Docs

Posted on September 21, 2008 by Chris Dale

I carried a story recently about Hobs Legal Docs which included a reference to a job which Hobs did in which 7Gb of client data was boiled down by them to a handful of documents for review. I have been given some more information about that case which I will pass on in due course because it is a powerful illustration of the money-saving power of electronic sifting.

Before that, however, there is news of a link-up in the UK between Hobs Legal Docs and Anacomp, the owner of hosted litigation support software CaseLogistix. Continue reading →

Posted in CaseLogistix, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure | Leave a comment

Legal Inc’s INClusive answer for routine matters

Posted on September 21, 2008 by Chris Dale

Although there is something slightly self-referential in quoting someone else who quotes you, I am pleased to see that something I wrote has been used to help make the the business case for electronic disclosure.

Legal Inc have launched what they call a “highly competitive commoditised solution for routine matters”. Called INClusive, the initiative aims to make it easy and cost-effective for lawyers to turn their lever-arch files of paper into an electronic resource which can be searched and reviewed on-line.

The quotation of mine with which they open their press release is this:

“One of my constant refrains is that technology is a leveller and that a small firm armed with appropriate outsourced technology can run rings round a big one who is not there yet.” Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Courts, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Ernst & Young Forensic Party

Posted on September 21, 2008 by Chris Dale

If Ernst & Young Forensic Technology and Discovery Services manage their clients’ work as thoroughly as they manage their party invitations – as I am sure they do – it seems unlikely that they miss much. My Inbox is full of reminders and confirmations of the date, all apparently from department head Sanjay Bhandari – I say “apparently” because I was actually talking to him at the Legal Week Litigation Forum when the last of them arrived the day before the party, and I am damn sure he wasn’t sending e-mails as we spoke.

It is worth a trip down to More London even if you are not favoured with an invitation from Ernst & Young. It lies on the South Bank, just west of Tower Bridge. I found it when I spent a night at the Hilton Tower Bridge earlier in the year – it is even better by night than by day. The river frontage is a wide space with seats and those fountains which bubble gently out of the ground and then shoot up your trouser leg when you get too close. Apart from E&Y’s building, there is Boris’s bee-hive shaped office, Norton Rose, and a Marks & Spencer food store to serve as a backdrop, with HMS Belfast, 30 St Mary Axe (aka the Gherkin) and the Tower of London in front of you. I saw a dinner party taking place on a platform hanging from a crane, with waiters wandering nonchalantly around 60 feet up.

The view gets even better when you get up E&Y’s building, particularly at sunset, with a panorama from Westminster to the Tower. One probably should not choose a professional adviser on the strength of the view from its office, but it might be a tie-breaker when you come down to the last two choices. Continue reading →

Posted in Attenex, Discovery, Document Retention, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Ernst & Young, Litigation, Litigation Readiness, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Attenex round every corner

Posted on September 21, 2008 by Chris Dale

Attenex is not the only provider of heavy-duty processing and analysis software for chewing through very large amounts of electronic data, but the name has become a kind of shorthand for that function. As Hoover is to vacuum cleaners, so Attenex is to massive volumes of data in the e-Discovery world – not a bad analogy, in fact, given the aptitude of both for sucking up lots of stuff. Continue reading →

Posted in Attenex, Clearwell, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Ernst & Young, FTI Technology, KPMG, Legal Technology, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Reforming Case Management

Posted on September 20, 2008 by Chris Dale

The Commercial Court Long Trials Recommendations inevitably took centre stage in the session entitled Reforming case management at the Legal Week Litigation Forum last week.

I reached it in time to hear Ali Malek QC making it clear at the end of his speech that some of his cases simply would not fit into what he saw as an idealised time-frame. He was talking about the actual trial, and about cases whose factual or technical complexity could not sensibly be conveyed with a short statement of case and a brief opening.

The main act was Anthony Boswood QC, whose starting proposition was that every procedural change in his time had led to an increase in costs. The Commercial Court Recommendations provided no exception. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR | Leave a comment

Welcome to Interwoven Discovery Mining as sponsor

Posted on September 20, 2008 by Chris Dale

You will observe a new logo on the roster of sponsors who are supporting the e-Disclosure Information Project of which this blog is the outward and visible sign. I am very pleased to welcome Interwoven iscovery Mining on board.

Recently acquired by content-management giant Interwoven, Discovery Mining has made a good name for itself as a provider of on-demand hosted e-Discovery services. Its strengths include ease of use, predictable costs and scaleability. The aim is to get the data in quickly and make it available for speedy review with the minimum of user learning, and to make it easy to get it out again for export to other systems or for third parties. Continue reading →

Posted in Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, ILTA, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Smoking guns, haystacks and teeth

Posted on September 19, 2008 by Chris Dale

It is not often that I devote a whole article merely to the opening remarks of the chairman of a conference, but then it not often that one has a former Lord Chancellor in the chair. Lord Falconer’s speech at the Legal Week Litigation Forum which covered the economic drivers to litigation warranted the space I gave to it. This page covers the session in which I played a part.

I was a panellist in a session called Streamlined litigation: assuring efficiency through applied technology, along with Robert Brown, senior director of First Advantage Litigation Consulting Services and Rachel Coldbreath of Cleary Gottleib Steen & Hamilton LLP. That we never got as far as my prepared notes is by no means a complaint. Quite apart from the fact that I can use them somewhere else, the one hour allotted to us raced by in an unusual amount of audience inter-action. This was explained partly by the fact that this was a litigation audience rather than one narrowly limited to electronic disclosure, and partly by the layout of the room – members of a group facing each other round a square of tables are somehow more inclined to speak out than one in rows of chairs. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Legal Technology, LexisNexis, Litigation, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Litigation Forum: Facing the Future

Posted on September 19, 2008 by Chris Dale

Legal Week’s Litigation Forum this week, sponsored by Ernst & Young, was rather different from the (many) others I have been to this year. They have been e-disclosure conferences with litigation practice and procedure as a context. This week’s event was about litigation, with the disclosure element (from me amongst others) merely a component in the wider setting.

The former Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, was the chairman and, in the event, the giver of the keynote speech in the absence of Lord Goldsmith who had been billed to deliver it. The quality which made Falconer one of the few likeable members of Blair’s government was a nice line in self-deprecation. When he was a young barrister, he said, much of his work consisted of Peter Goldsmith’s returns; he was glad to see that nothing had changed.

Lehman Brothers had collapsed two days earlier, and the overnight news was that the US Government had bailed out AIG. Lord Falconer emphasised how the week’s events had changed the map for litigators. A year of the credit crunch had had little impact on the levels of commercial litigation, but that was because the large institutions – Bear Sterns and Northern Rock – had not been allowed to go under. A rash of insolvencies must follow the failure of a player the size of Lehmans and the consequential litigation will cover three main areas: Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Ernst & Young, Litigation | Leave a comment

Masters Conference in Washington

Posted on September 16, 2008 by Chris Dale

Details are coming in of the Masters Conference taking place in Washington on 16 and 17 October. This year’s title is Viewing E-Discovery Through the Corporate Veil – see the Masters Conference web site for more details.

The focus is on litigation in the global arena with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) as well as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) at the forefront. Topics include:

Cross Border Investigations and Discovery Management
Cost Effective Internal Investigations in the FCPA Era
Litigation Readiness
Real-life Implications of the FRCP
The Subprime Mortgage Meltdown
Corporate E-Discovery Budgets
New Technologies for Streamlining E-Discovery
Creating and Implementing the Corporate IT Structure
Effective Records and Information Management
Government and Regulatory Compliance Continue reading →

Posted in Court Rules, CPR, Discovery, Document Retention, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, FRCP, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Practical Guidelines for e-Disclosure Management

Posted on September 16, 2008 by Chris Dale

Litigation solicitors in private practice and in-house lawyers would have done well to be at the Ark Group conference last week. Run over two days within spitting distance of the Tower, it had the title Adopting Practical Guidelines to e-Disclosure Management for the Legal Profession. Practical it was, as well as conveniently located.

Its supplier sponsors included FoxData, Autonomy, CaseLogistix by Anacomp, Guidance Software and LexisNexis, all of whom are also sponsors of the e-Disclosure Information Project which I run. Part of the Project’s aim is to make connections between suppliers whose service or software offerings are in different parts of the wood – between them, these suppliers and their applications collect data, process it, host it for review, help with analysis and make it available for exchange with others. There is overlap and competition between them, but also a common interest in helping practitioners – and judges – understand what is available to tackle the problems of e-disclosure. Part of my role is to help the would-be buyers see both the wood and the trees. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, CaseLogistix, CaseMap, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Data Protection, Discovery, DocuMatrix, Document Retention, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Forensic data collections, FoxData, Guidance Software, LexisNexis, Litigation Readiness, Litigation Support, Part 31 CPR | Leave a comment

Understanding transparent search for UK litigation

Posted on September 13, 2008 by Chris Dale

The US courts are laying increasing stress on the technology and the methodology used to find documents relevant to a case. Even US lawyers are pulling the blanket over their heads at the implications of this, and UK lawyers will do the same if we just leave them to read the US judgments. We have a very different set of aims over here, but the technology and the principles developing to meet the FRCP challenge are exactly what we need, just turned to different purposes. The key term is “transparency”.

I have shied away from writing about the judgments of US courts which are the all-consuming subject of the year in American litigation circles. US v O’Keefe, Equity Analytics v Lundin and Victor Stanley v Creative Pipe all deal with the importance of accurate and reliable searches – embracing both the technology and the skill with which it is used – and between them, in their slightly different ways, appear to raise the level of equipment, qualification and skill needed to engage in the business of giving discovery / disclosure of documents. Serious stuff, in a country where so much of the focus appears, to UK eyes at least, to be on the technology and the methodology at the expense of the search for justice – with the emphasis on the word “expense”. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, CaseLogistix, Clearwell, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Disclosure Statement, Discovery, DocuMatrix, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Epiq Systems, FRCP, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

e-Disclosure conference list updated

Posted on September 5, 2008 by Chris Dale

The next round of conferences begins on 10 and 11 September with Ark Group’s Adopting practical guidelines for E-Disclosure management at which I am again speaking with HHJ Simon Brown QC. Our subject is Preparing Judges to make effective e-Disclosure decisions.

I have five more to do in London in 2008, plus one in Sydney and six regional talks for the Law Society. Next year’s bookings are beginning to come in.

By then, the trial period for the Commercial Court Recommendations will have run its course, the new draft directions order will have been in use for six months or so in the Mercantile Courts and we should be close to having a Technology Questionnaire as a required stage in the case management process. If you do not know what any of these things are, or what effect they will have, it is time to start finding out. Between them, they signal a more rigorous approach to case management, with particular emphasis on electronic disclosure. It will no longer be possible to treat Part 31 CPR and its Practice Direction as optional. Continue reading →

Posted in Australian courts, Case Management, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

LexisNexis release CaseMap 8

Posted on September 3, 2008 by Chris Dale

LexisNexis have released Version 8 of CaseMap, the application whose tagline “Case Analysis made easy” is amply justified by its functionality. LexisNexis are, of course, sponsors of my e-Disclosure Information Project, but I am on record as a CaseMap enthusiast since long before the Project existed.

I have not had the chance to look at the new version yet – you can download it easily from here – but the list of new features is enticing. Most attractive, in principle, is the new DocPreviewer review tool which is aimed at helping lawyers handle e-mail disclosure review for small to mid-sized cases. Continue reading →

Posted in CaseMap, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, Electronic disclosure, LexisNexis, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Hobs Legal Docs praise RingTail and IPro

Posted on September 2, 2008 by Chris Dale

London-based Hobs Legal Docs has strengthened its relationship with FTI Ringtail and now has five Ringtail Certified Services Technicians – apparently the largest headcount outside the US.

Managing Director Terry Harrison is also enthusiastic about IPRO’s eCapture which Hobs uses for EDD processing – the only user in Europe, it seems. Terry says of one job, which began with 7Gb of data and 370,000 pages, that “the whole process took just a few hours and the law firm, as well as their clients, were delighted at the time and cost saving.” Hobs now provide IPRO’s eReview application either on a hosted basis or for purchase for in-house use.

I mention this really because any lawyer facing 370,000 pages, or anything like it, who does NOT have the data handled electronically in “just a few hours” might like to think about whether the alternative – presumably printing the ages, copying them a few times, and setting some lawyers to reading through them – is consistent with the duty owed to either the client or the court. You might just do it by not recording much of the time spent on it – but that is not really consistent with the duty owed to your other partners.

Judges are starting to want to know about the comparative speed and cost of different ways of skinning the electronic data cat. It would be hard, I think, to show that the “print, copy and read” approach will stand scrutiny.

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Posted in Case Management, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

CaseLogistix improves native document handling

Posted on September 2, 2008 by Chris Dale

CaseLogistix, Anacomp‘s litigation document review platform, has announced new functionality to handle native documents and other changes. Anacomp are amongst the sponsors of the e-Disclosure Information Project.

CaseLogistix has always had the ability to handle documents in their native format (150 file types at the last count). The enhancement assigns a unique identifier to each document – as opposed to pages – allowing concept search tools to treat single-page tiff files as a single document.

Other changes include improved management of redacted files, printing of attachments with parent documents and other parent/child enhancements, a combined native/image tab in the document viewer and direct native file ingestion. Continue reading →

Posted in CaseLogistix, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, ILTA, Legal Technology, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Pay-per-use EnCase for in-house e-disclosure

Posted on September 2, 2008 by Chris Dale

A new pricing model announced by Guidance Software allows companies to use its EnCase® eDiscovery on a pay-per-use basis. Hitherto, EnCase® eDiscovery has been available to end-users only by outright purchase. The new structure gives them the option of paying only for what they use, with no up-front licence fees.

The charges are tied to the amount of data searched, collected, processed and put into load files. The monthly invoices break down the usage by matter, which should make it straightforward to recharge the costs internally or to insurers.

Outright purchase of a perpetual licence remains an option for those with the throughput to justify capital budget monies. For those who opt for the new pricing method, the usage rates decrease with higher levels of commitment. Continue reading →

Posted in Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Forensic data collections, Guidance Software, ILTA, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

No UK law firms at ILTA 2008

Posted on August 30, 2008 by Chris Dale

After this February’s LegalTech in New York, I wrote a piece called Why no UK lawyers at LegalTech? in which I suggested that UK law firms – partners and/or their senior IT staff – would benefit enormously from a few days in a place where almost every e-disclosure supplier and expert, including a large contingent of experienced UK litigation support managers, gather every year. There they could see demos of every application worth seeing, talk to pretty well everyone with knowledge and experience – and have a good time as well. Continue reading →

Posted in CaseLogistix, Discovery, DocuMatrix, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Epiq Systems, FTI Technology, Guidance Software, ILTA, KCura, KPMG, Kroll, Legal Technology, LexisNexis, Litigation Support, Recommind, Summation, Trilantic | Leave a comment

Signs of cultural differences

Posted on August 29, 2008 by Chris Dale

This has little to do with electronic discovery, but says a little about the cultural differences between the UK and the US, something which is relevant to those who sell in both jurisdictions.

Visiting remote parish churches recently in rural Suffolk and Cornwall, I came across notices solemnly warning that it is illegal to smoke in the church. At the door of the Gaylord Hotel in Texas which was host to ILTA this year, I came across this notice:

Continue reading →

Posted in Discovery, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, ILTA, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Foreign collections need more than big feet

Posted on August 29, 2008 by Chris Dale

You will have seen from other posts that I have been at the ILTA conference in Dallas this week. ILTA is the International Litigation Technology Association and its conference title was Global Perspective, Peer Advantage, a title conveying the theme that attendees, regardless of size or location, can gain something from adopting a global perspective and from meeting with peers.

The opening session on the litigation track was very much about global perspectives. Browning Marean of DLA Piper LLP, Nigel Murray of Trilantic and Stephen Dooley of Sullivan & Cromwell talked about international discovery exercises under the title International discovery and handling foreign language data. Two international law firms and a UK-based litigation support company with a growing US client-base made a good team to give us the global picture.

Continue reading →

Posted in Data Protection, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, EU Safe Harbor, ILTA, Litigation Support, Trilantic | Leave a comment

ILTA 2008 opens in Dallas

Posted on August 25, 2008 by Chris Dale

ILTA 2008 kicked off this evening with a big party at the conference venue, the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, Dallas, Texas. If the conference itself yields anything as extraordinary as the venue, it will be some event. Why should this be of any interest to UK lawyers and their corporate clients, and to judges?

I reckon this place was designed by a committee, each of whose members worked in secrecy, ignorant of the plans of the others – you know, the way some law firms manage their discovery. Cultural references included Buckingham Palace, Colditz, Bents Fort, Disneyland, the Whitewater Shopping Centre, the largest upmarket international hotel you have ever seen, a space centre, and the “40 Acres” backlot at Culver City which was the setting for so many Hollywood films. You could film the burning of Atlanta and Star Wars inside here at the same time. Continue reading →

Posted in Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, ILTA, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Function and process at the airport

Posted on August 24, 2008 by Chris Dale

Litigation support involves more these days than a bit of law and some rules. You need an interest in functional design and in process and workflow. It is also a business where time and resources matter, and where much effort is devoted to working out how to apply the fewest people for the shortest time needed to achieve the client’s objective.

I seem to spend quite a lot of my time travelling these days (I am in Dallas as I write this), and I wonder why the same interests do not have a place at airports. Take the check-in, the first section you come in the long haul through to your seat. It is a place where impenetrable static obstacles – a series of queues – form north-south to your entrance, whilst large numbers of people need to move east-west and west-east laden with baggage, whilst others stand around waiting for….something – the end of the world sometimes seems both more imminent and more desirable. Continue reading →

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Similarities greater than the differences in Pasadena

Posted on August 24, 2008 by Chris Dale

Friday 22 August

I am sitting by a hotel pool in Pasadena as I type this. The sun reflects off white buildings and blue water. Bronzed beauties recline a few feet away, and it hard to recall that I tried to buy a pair of Wellington boots a couple of days ago to cope with the English summer.

The closest reminder of England is the Beckham Grill opposite, complete with an old London cab on a stand outside. Perhaps the waitresses wear Beefeater costumes and say “Am I bovvered?” to enhance the restaurant’s claim to Englishness, just as English people adopt a drawl and wear a big hat to convey that they are being American. Cultural differences are a little more subtle than that. Continue reading →

Posted in Court Rules, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Forensic data collections, Guidance Software, ILTA | Leave a comment

Off to Pasadena and ILTA

Posted on August 20, 2008 by Chris Dale

I am off tomorrow morning to Pasadena, coming back via Dallas where ILTA (the International Litigation Technology Association) is holding its big annual conference.

The draw in Pasadena is Guidance Software who, as I wrote in a recent post, were early sponsors of the e-Disclosure Information Project which I run, and who have been enthusiastic supporters ever since. This is a welcome opportunity to get to see the senior management, including CEO Victor Limongelli whom I met briefly in London last year.

ILTA is an opportunity to catch up with people with whom I correspond or speak but rarely see. There is an increasing amount of information-trading about developments in electronic discovery between those in the UK and the US, as well as Australia. The problems, and the solutions, are obviously similar. The rules and the practice are perhaps less alike in practical effect than they may appear to be. Superficial impressions of scale are misleading – big cases are big cases in all these jurisdictions, but most US lawyers litigating electronically are in small firms. What is different is the culture in which lawyers, judges, suppliers and clients work towards cost-effective solutions pro rata to all sizes of case, and cultural differences are best identified face to face.

Most of the Project’s sponsors will be there – OutIndex, Guidance Software, LexisNexis, Epiq Systems, Anacomp / CaseLogistix, Autonomy Zantaz and Trilantic – a chance to meet the US people where generally I deal with the UK end, as well as to see others who may become sponsors. As at LegalTech in New York every February, I go with few pre-booked appointments, confident that the days will be filled with discussions which add value to what I do in the UK.

I should be able to write about it all from there, at least as a technical matter. The practice is likely to be otherwise.

If you are at ILTA and would like to know more about the e-Disclosure Information Project, do come and say Hello or send me an e-mail.

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Posted in CaseLogistix, Discovery, DocuMatrix, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Guidance Software, ILTA, Legal Technology, LexisNexis, Litigation Support, Trilantic | Leave a comment

Some conclusions from Socha-Gelbmann

Posted on August 20, 2008 by Chris Dale

As the dust settles on the 2008 Socha-Gelbmann Survey, it is perhaps useful to pick out a couple of the conclusions which particularly affect UK corporations, law firms and suppliers. As I have reported elsewhere (Project sponsors ranked by Socha-Gelbmann) those who sponsor the e-Disclosure Information Project were well represented in the rankings tables, with Anacomp, Autonomy Zantaz, Epiq Systems, Guidance Software, LexisNexis and Trilantic all appearing in one or more of the charts (the links, incidentally, are to their respective press releases on the subject).

George Socha and Tom Gelbmann have written a commentary on the market as it appeared to them following this, their last survey in this form. Commentary on commentary does not necessarily add value, but I highlight what they say about analysis, about a perceived shift from services to software and about staffing up to enable law firms to meet the challenges and take the opportunities which exist in this market. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Court Rules, CPR, Discovery, Document Retention, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, EDRM, Electronic disclosure, FRCP, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

A big culling exercise on holiday

Posted on August 20, 2008 by Chris Dale

After a while at this game, one begins to see parallels with the EDRM stages in areas of life which have nothing to do with documents. I am just back from a week in a remote cottage in Cornwall whose garden had been neglected for a year. In EDRM parlance, its document management was a mess and it needed a good cull before it was fit for review. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Document Retention, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, EDRM, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Delivering knowledge by ear

Posted on August 20, 2008 by Chris Dale

I am always interested in seeking out different ways of delivering information about electronic disclosure – much of what I do in the e-Disclosure Information Project involves digging out news and comment, distilling what seems helpful, and pointing people towards it.

My own preferences are broadly traditional whether as recipient or giver of information. I like the interaction – or at least the potential for interaction – which you get from an old-fashioned lecture format and (as you will gather since you are reading this) by writing about the subjects. The web gives immeasurably greater reach to both these methods – as soon as I save this article, it can immediately be read by anyone with a web connection from Sydney to San Diego. Whether it will be, in August, is a different matter, but it will still be here when everyone gets back from their holidays, giving an unparalleled combination of immediacy and longevity. We have come to take this powerful reach for granted in a very short time. Continue reading →

Posted in CaseLogistix, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Guidance Software, LexisNexis, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Distinguishing between training and education

Posted on August 20, 2008 by Chris Dale

We tend to use the words training and education in an arbitrary way, ignoring the practical and perhaps hands-on element implicit in the idea of training.

Lord Krebs expressed the distinction rather nicely in a recent speech in the House of Lords. he said:

We should distinguish between education on the one hand and training and skills on the other. These are not the same thing. If my daughters came home from school and told me that they had been to sex education classes, I would be comfortable; if they said they had been to sex training and skills classes, I would not.

His context was the sensible suggestion that different universities ought to be offering different things, not merely emulating each other. The comment applies rather well to the different types of knowledge and skill needed to handle electronic disclosure and the context – the rules of court, the legal context and the clients’ needs – of which it is a part.

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Knock the knocking copy to expand the market

Posted on August 19, 2008 by Chris Dale

This is a matter of impression rather than analysis, but I reckon that running down your opponents plays less well in the UK than in the US and that this is true equally of selling things and of politics. Americans applaud the spirited attacker where we sympathise with the underdog. Whatever it does for sales in the US, I don’t think it works here.

I am no slouch myself when it comes to handing out adverse comment and I admire deft and clever attacks in print on those who deserve it. I just don’t think it sells things. Perhaps that is because most of it is neither deft nor clever and much of it simply invites close scrutiny both of the attacker’s argument and of his own position. Knocking copy draws fire not just from the “victim” but from others, and those who deal it must be bomb-proof themselves. Continue reading →

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The Aussie e-Discovery Dream Team

Posted on August 15, 2008 by Chris Dale

Renée Lee, International Marketing Director at Guidance Software, is leaving Guidance and will shortly be joining eDiscovery Tools. The e-Disclosure Information Project’s loss on one side is balanced by a gain on the other

I had been two days in the remote Cornish cottage which we borrowed last week before I strayed into a patch of garden where my BlackBerry sprang to life (yes, I know it has a switch somewhere to turn it off). The first batch of messages to come through included a short one from Renée Lee at Guidance Software briefly asking recipients to note that this was her final day at Guidance Software. Since Renee and I had been talking a couple of days earlier, planning my imminent visit to Guidance in Pasadena, this came as something of a shock.

As a communication from someone highly skilled in communication, the message was somewhat short on information. It took another 24 hours for me to establish that Renée is going to join Jo Sherman and Seamus Byrne at eDiscovery Tools. Continue reading →

Posted in Australian courts, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, eDiscovery Tools, Electronic disclosure, Guidance Software, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Meeting FoxData properly at last

Posted on August 15, 2008 by Chris Dale

Nearly a year after FoxData agreed to be the first sponsor of the e-Disclosure Information Project, I have at last been to see the company’s premises and met Ian Manning properly

The order in which logos appear beside these pages reflects the sequence in which companies agreed to sponsor the e-Disclosure Information Project. For those new to this site, the Project’s purpose is to increase awareness about electronic disclosure by bringing together all those with an interest in what is often the biggest single expense in civil litigation. Of all the players – courts, practitioners, corporate clients and suppliers – the group which is most remote from the practicalities is the one which has to make the decisions about case management, the judges. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Forensic data collections, FoxData, KPMG, Legal Technology, Litigation Support, Part 31 CPR | Leave a comment

Project sponsors ranked by Socha-Gelbmann

Posted on August 12, 2008 by Chris Dale

It is probably a grave dereliction of duty to disappear on holiday just as George Socha and Tom Gelbmann publish their annual Electronic Discovery Survey provider rankings, but that is no reflection on the performance of those of my sponsors whose names appear in it.

Anacomp, Autonomy Zantaz, Epiq Systems, Guidance Software, LexisNexis and Trilantic all appear, some of them more than once, in a survey regarded as the most objective and authoritative report on an industry whose 2007 revenues, at $2.794 billion, were up 46% from 2006. Continue reading →

Posted in CaseLogistix, CaseMap, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Epiq Systems, Guidance Software, LexisNexis, Litigation Support, Trilantic | Leave a comment

Waltzing off to Australia

Posted on July 30, 2008 by Chris Dale

I have for some time been mentioning Australia as the jurisdiction to watch for developments in court rules and procedures relating to case management and, in particular, the handling of electronic documents.

They warrant a closer look on my part, not least because I have been invited to speak at Ark Group’s Corporate eDiscovery Conference Preparing your organisation for eDiscovery in Sydney on 13-15 October 2008. My main subject will be Responsibility for eDiscovery, which allows me to bring together sources as diverse as the UK Commercial Court Recommendations, the US Qualcomm sanctions case, the recent US cases (O’Keefe and Victor Stanley) on the use of search technology, and the express requirement in Australia to the effect that lawyers who appear before the courts ought to know something about relevant technology or get suitable help when they do not. Continue reading →

Posted in Australian courts, Case Management, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, eDiscovery Tools, Electronic disclosure, FRCP, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Aikens and Jackson go to the Court of Appeal

Posted on July 30, 2008 by Chris Dale

Two of the new appointments to the Court of Appeal attract my attention for different reasons. Sir Richard Aikens was one of those responsible for the Commercial Court Recommendations, and I used to instruct Sir Rupert Jackson when he was a junior barrister.

Mr Justice Aikens becomes a Lord Justice of Appeal on 19 November. He was Judge in charge of the Commercial Court from 2005-2006 and was chairman of the Aikens Committee which produced the Commercial Court Long Trials Recommendations now undergoing a trial period in that Court. His elevation means that he will not be there when the testing period comes to an end on 30 November. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Lord Justice Jackson | Leave a comment

Trilantic welcomed as Project sponsors

Posted on July 28, 2008 by Chris Dale

A warm welcome to Trilantic as the latest addition to the sponsors of the e-Disclosure Information Project. Trilantic is a legal support company focused on electronic Disclosure services, delivering a wide range of solutions to lawyers and others.

The purpose of the Project is to bring together all those with an interest in electronic disclosure, whether lawyers, judges, suppliers or the corporations whose electronic data is what it is all about. Nigel Murray is better known than most of those on the supplier side, and has done much to promote the industry.

Nigel and I started in this business at about the same time – my dedication to electronic filing allows me to date our first meeting to 15 December 1993. My welcome to Trilantic is therefore a personal one as well as being on behalf of the Project.

More will follow in due course.

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OutIndex supports child healthcare

Posted on July 28, 2008 by Chris Dale

Law firms have long been involved in pro bono work, applying their skills and their resources towards helping those who are not fortunate enough to be able to afford their services. I have not hitherto come across the same idea in litigation support companies, which is not to say it does not happen.

Although I receive press releases and other formal and informal sources of information, quite a lot of what I know is stumbled upon while looking for something else. During a random wander round the invaluable EDD Update, I came across the familiar name of OutIndex and a link to their announcement of a corporate programme focused on childrens’ healthcare. Continue reading →

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Meeting people is right

Posted on July 28, 2008 by Chris Dale

Before you entrust your clients’ disclosure documents to a litigation support provider, it is worth getting to know a few, and that means real human contact, not just reading up about them. Meetings do not have to involve sitting round a table in an office.

The week in which the EU has purported to abolish the acre is a good time to mention the 450 acre field in which I hold meetings when people come and see me. It is called Port Meadow and lies a couple of minutes from my front door. The most recent such visitor, last week, was Andrew Sieja, CEO of KCura, whose Relativity document review application is making its mark.

More on Relativity in a moment. What is the value to me of meeting CEOs of litigation support providers and software companies? Why do they want to meet me? What is the best context for these getting-to-know-you conversations? And why does it matter in a business which, stripped of its fripperies, comes down to applying some technology to a pile of data so that lawyers can fight about it? Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, KCura, Legal Technology, Litigation Support, Part 31 CPR | Leave a comment

Autonomy hosts Legal Forum in Washington

Posted on July 19, 2008 by Chris Dale

I am just back from a Legal Forum hosted by Autonomy in Washington DC. Autonomy specialise in enterprise search and Meaning Based Computing. Their acquisition of ZANTAZ 12 months ago brought them into the e-mail archiving arena and expanded their e-discovery offerings, not least with their hosted review application Introspect.

I have not yet had the opportunity to welcome Autonomy ZANTAZ formally as sponsors of the e-Disclosure Information Project but am obviously very pleased to do so. The invitation to the Washington Legal Forum in fact preceded the sponsorship. Continue reading →

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Catching up will have to wait

Posted on July 15, 2008 by Chris Dale

I had hoped by now to have written up the talks which HHJ Simon Brown QC and I gave to two groups of judges in the last two weeks, but time is against me and a short summary will have to do for now.

The audiences were first the Designated Civil Judges and then the Specialist Judges. The e-Disclosure Information Project, of which this site is the most obvious tangible output, began as an exercise in helping judges at the junction of two technical subjects – the CPR and technology. The first of these has been unchanged since 2005, but remains shrouded in a mystery which it does not deserve. The second changes all the time. My role is to try and unshroud the rules and to help introduce the technology to those who need it or who need to know about it if proportionate orders are to be made about disclosure. Continue reading →

Posted in Australian courts, Case Management, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, DocuMatrix, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Epiq Systems, FoxData, FRCP, Litigation Support, Part 31 CPR | Leave a comment

Affordable electronic disclosure pricing

Posted on July 11, 2008 by Chris Dale

I wrote last week applauding an e-disclosure services company which had launched an electronic disclosure service at a relatively low fixed price per Gb (see e-Disclosure pricing not just for large matters). It appeared that they had told everyone but me about it, which seemed a bit odd given that I am known to be keen to promote the fact that electronic handing of electronic data is not as expensive as it is assumed to be.

I wrote a story about it anyway, if a post without any actual facts in it can be called a story, and it got nearly 50 hits in a couple of days (that, I should tell you, is not at all bad for what remains a niche interest). One of those was obviously the company concerned, who wrote at once to say that the mailing list had gone awry for all the press contacts and that it was not just me who had been left in the dark. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Courts, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Litigation Support, Trilantic | Leave a comment

eDisclosure Pricing – not just for large matters

Posted on July 7, 2008 by Chris Dale

This site aims both to influence the way in which e-disclosure services and solutions are provided and to report on developments. One of my reiterated observations is that suppliers of e-disclosure services find it difficult to get across the fact that many of them offer services such as electronic handling of e-mail, de-duplication and hosting at charges which are cost-effective even for relatively small cases – see my recent article If I had known the cost was hundreds not thousands….

We pride ourselves here on being up with the news, and being the place where hard news and gossip is traded first, so I was very pleased to be told, from two sources before lunch-time, that one such supplier has launched an initiative to convey just this, with a pricing policy described as “aggressive”. Indeed, I heard about it within 15 minutes of the mailshot going out. But not, as it happens, from the supplier itself. Continue reading →

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A US view on UK electronic disclosure

Posted on July 7, 2008 by Chris Dale

Although the conferences referred to here were both in London, they were not specifically about electronic disclosure in the UK. There was plenty, though, to interest those on both sides of the Atlantic, not least the possibility that part of our approach might be exportable

Jason Baron, the US National Archives’ Director of Litigation and a well-known commentator on all things to do with electronic disclosure / discovery, has beaten me to a full commentary on two of the conferences which I attended recently. Since he has done it so well, and since I am still out of my office speaking more than I am in my office writing, I will gratefully point you to his excellent article A Tale of Two London ESI Forums on Ralph Losey’s e-Discovery Team site.

I have mentioned both conferences (see e-Disclosure conferences give plenty to think about) and will say more about aspects of them over the Summer. They were the DESI II Workshop and the International Conference on Digital Evidence. The key points from Jason Baron’s article insofar as my catchment area is concerned are as follows: Continue reading →

Posted in Court Rules, CPR, Discovery, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, FRCP, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Thinking straight(away) on e-disclosure collections

Posted on June 30, 2008 by Chris Dale

Conventional wisdom has it that a forensic collection of electronic data is necessary only where fraud is suspected or imminent destruction is feared. Equally unthinking, to my eye, is the opposite assumption, that a full disk image must be taken of every relevant PC, server and other device, just in case the data might be needed, regardless of the cost.

Prefacing this, as usual, with confirmation that I am well aware that many cases need no more than a few minutes with Windows Explorer and a DVD-writer to collect the data required for electronic disclosure, let’s have a brief canter over the ground which opens before a solicitor when he gets the first call from a client to say that litigation is in contemplation or has actually arrived. Continue reading →

Posted in Document Retention, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Forensic data collections, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Epiq Systems appoints IT Director for Europe

Posted on June 30, 2008 by Chris Dale

Epiq Systems, owners of the successful document review platform DocuMatrix and sponsors of the e-Disclosure Information Project, has appointed John Lang as IT Director of its UK office with a Europe-wide brief. His responsibilities will include the development of Epiq Systems’ IT infrastructure in the UK and the evaluation of new technologies to help maintain a high quality of customer service.

The role extends beyond the UK as Epiq takes on bigger and more complex projects which cross multiple countries. Epiq Systems Limited (the UK division of Epiq Systems Inc.) works with 4 out of 5 of the magic circle law firms – and at a global level with 48 of the top Global 50 law firms. Continue reading →

Posted in Discovery, DocuMatrix, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Epiq Systems, Legal Technology, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

EnCase On Demand training courses

Posted on June 30, 2008 by Chris Dale

Guidance Software, who are amongst the sponsors of the e-Disclosure Information Project, has launched an on-line training program called EnCase On Demand which gives online access to its courses in enterprise investigations (internal investigations, eDiscovery) and forensic investigations (law enforcement, fraud).

The company has trained more than 27,000 people in the last decade and this initiative offers a flexible and cost-effective way for users to stay up to date. Continue reading →

Posted in E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Forensic data collections, Guidance Software, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

E-Disclosure conferences give plenty to think about

Posted on June 27, 2008 by Chris Dale

Those who expect a daily addition to this collection of notes and essays (and I know there are a few such) may have wondered if I have run out of things to say from the paucity of posts recently.

Far from it, but I have been preparing for or attending three conferences this week, each of which has generated more than enough potential copy without leaving time to write it. What follows is a taster which I will follow over the next few days with more detailed reports.

At the Lawyer conference E-Disclosure – Beyond the Rules, I spoke with HHJ Simon Brown QC on the Commercial Court Recommendations and what the courts expect from you. We picked out the parts and the principles which apply to disclosure, and emphasised that everything we talked about applied as much in other courts as in the Commercial Court in cases where the volumes of documents made it proportionate. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, CaseMap, Commercial Court, Court Rules, CPR, Disclosure Statement, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Ernst & Young, KPMG, LexisNexis, Litigation Support, Part 31 CPR, The Lawyer, Trilantic | Leave a comment

If I had known the cost was hundreds not thousands….

Posted on June 23, 2008 by Chris Dale

The reactions at an e-disclosure conference point up the value of getting an idea of the likely costs before deciding that electronic disclosure is not for you. You cannot assess proportionality without doing so, and may be surprised by the answer.

On my first slide at an all-day seminar for CLT Conferences this week, I had a quotation from the Commercial Court Recommendations.

“Automatic disclosure will not take place until after the CMC, which decides on the scope of disclosure” [Para 68a]

One of the delegates immediately asked “Is this just about the Commercial Court then?”, putting his finger straight onto the central difficulty in trying to raise understanding about electronic disclosure, even with an audience which self-selected as wanting to know about the subject.

No, it is most certainly not just about the Commercial Court, nor only about big litigation between big, technically-skilled firms. Indeed, the implied assumption that “big” and “technically-skilled” go together highlights another point here – there are many big firms who have no idea about electronic disclosure, and plenty of smaller firms who do. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, DocuMatrix, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, Electronic disclosure, Epiq Systems, FoxData, LexisNexis, Litigation Support, Trilantic | Leave a comment

The Court of Appeal on the scope of disclosure

Posted on June 17, 2008 by Chris Dale

Nichia Corporation v Argos may have been a patent case, but the sum involved was not very big and the principles as to proportionate disclosure and judicial case management are applicable everywhere

The ideal in legal commentary is that you know what the Court of Appeal said yesterday and report it. It is no less satisfying, however, to have been asserting publicly what you think the CA would say in certain circumstances – and then discover that it actually did so nearly a year ago in more or less the same terms.

No Court of Appeal judgment is needed to support my primary assertion that the scope of standard disclosure under Part 31.6 and Part 31.7 CPR is narrower, and may be very much narrower, than that of discovery under the old O24. RSC – see Relevant is irrelevant for standard disclosure where I quote from Lord Woolf’s 1995 Access to Justice Report as the best source for understanding the difference (as opposed to merely knowing that there is a difference) between the old regime and the new one. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, Part 31 CPR | Leave a comment

Do you need to know how the technology works?

Posted on June 13, 2008 by Chris Dale

I am about to show you a pop video on YouTube. This not entirely a bit of Friday afternoon relaxation, although I know that some of you wind down on Fridays and even take some week-ends off. It has a serious point, relevant to the use of technology for serious business matters.

To what extent do you need to know how something works in order to appreciate it (in the case of the video) or trust it (in relation to your clients’ disclosure and your professional duties)? In practice there are multiple levels of understanding, from the superficial to the deeply technical. In some cases, you need only to be aware that it is possible to achieve something with some technology, so all you want is the phone number of someone who can bring it along when you spot that it is needed. In others, you may have to justify in quite complex terms why you chose to use one method or application rather than another or none. In very few circumstances do you need to understand the computing science or the technical skill involved, just some basis for trusting that it works. Continue reading →

Posted in Discovery, eDisclosure, Electronic disclosure, Legal Technology, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

FTI Consulting to acquire Attenex

Posted on June 11, 2008 by Chris Dale

As I write this (kindly tipped off by the ever-alert Jonathan Maas of DLA Piper UK LLP) FTI Consulting is running a Webcast about its proposed acquisition of Attenex Corporation announced yesterday. The acquisition is subject to the relevant US regulatory processes.

No time, alas, to listen, nor to think through the implications for the UK market, but you may like to read the press release. The Webcast is (for now anyway) here.

The press release rightly emphasises that the addition of Attenex to FTI’s acquisition of Ringtail means (in their words) that FTI “now owns key proprietary technology for each crucial step of the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM), providing clients with a single source, industry leading solution”.

The slide supporting the Webcast illustrates this. The processing stage will be covered by Attenex Patterns® eDiscovery software which (their words again) “automates data processing and provides powerful visualization tools for quickly analyzing massive amounts of electronically stored information (ESI)” which will be more closely integrated with Ringtail (there is already software designed to move data between the two products), with FTI’s consulting services as an over-arching link.

Both products can be hosted or installed on site, allowing corporate and law firm customers to use the same technology whichever set-up suits them – which may be different for the same customer on different cases.

More follows.

Posted in Attenex, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, EDRM, Electronic disclosure, FTI Technology, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Access to justice goes wider than the environment

Posted on June 11, 2008 by Chris Dale

The UK’s treaty obligations to provide legal remedies which are “adequate … effective …fair, equitable, timely and not prohibitively expensive” in environmental cases applies in all cases and in all courts.

UKELA, the UK Environmental Law Association, recently published the report of a Working Party chaired by Mr Justice Sullivan called Ensuring access to environmental justice in England & Wales.

The report’s primary conclusion is that the UK is at risk of being in breach of Article 9(4) of the Aarhus Convention which requires EU member states to have judicial procedures which “provide adequate and effective remedies…and be fair, equitable, timely and not prohibitively expensive” in environmental matters.

The report is primarily concerned, and rightly, with those elements which are peculiar to this type of litigation – principally the existence of a public interest. Much of the report is concerned with costs – not so much their overall reduction, but specifically with Protective Costs Orders. The risk of being stuck with a large and unquantifiable order for costs in the event that the claim is unsuccessful is a powerful disincentive to exercise the rights which the Aarhus Convention is designed to protect. That, of course, must be balanced against the potentially enormous losses caused to developers and others when injunctions delay work.

The Working Party expressly avoided recommendations which would depend upon immediate changes to the Rules. There are two references in their Report, however, which are worth picking up on for their wider implications. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Rocket Dockets in Australian case management

Posted on June 9, 2008 by Chris Dale

We do not need an express “rocket docket” jurisdiction for everyone to agree that some or all of the case stages may be speeded up or dispensed with. It is, however, worth seeing what is happening in Australia.

Seamus Byrne of eDiscovery Tools in Australia (and now in London as well) responds quickly to my reference to “rocket docket” cases in the US (see Whose discovery rules would you rather break?) by pointing out that a rocket docket pilot is in hand in the Federal Court of Australia.

More formally called the Fast Track List , the pilot takes as its guiding premise that Cases cannot be made less complex, but judges can control the conduct of a case to a much greater extent thereby ensuring efficiency. Discovery has become most burdensome [and in] many cases it the single largest cost incurred in the preparation of the case. Many practitioners in the UK will applaud the conclusion that the practice … of requiring parties’ evidence to be tendered in the form of witness statements has significantly added to the costs. Continue reading →

Posted in Australian courts, Case Management, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Welcome to new Project sponsors

Posted on June 6, 2008 by Chris Dale

You will have noticed two new logos on this blog and my web site. Epiq Systems and Anacomp have agreed to support the e-Disclosure Information Project, and although I put their logos up at once, I have not had time to welcome them properly. Continue reading →

Posted in CaseLogistix, Discovery, DocuMatrix, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Epiq Systems, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Revealing redactions in Acrobat PDFs

Posted on June 6, 2008 by Chris Dale

I suggest here from time to time that it is often human error rather than technical failures which cause data to be revealed inadvertantly. For every security loophole which is actually attributable to a system failure, you can find more which result from a thinking failure – a file is left in a cab, or a Government minister parades herself in front of the cameras with Cabinet secrets on display (see People the weakest link in data security).

Quite often the error has a mixed origin – a human misunderstands or misuses the technology with results varying from the merely embarassing to the disastrous. My concern about such events is that it is usually the technology which gets the blame. Continue reading →

Posted in Discovery, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Legal Technology, Lit Sup Technical, Litigation Support, PDF | Leave a comment

Ambiguous appearances in the House of Lords

Posted on June 4, 2008 by Chris Dale

I scan the Times Law Reports occasionally, looking out for decisions relevant to case management. What I am after is a Court of Appeal decision upholding an order from, say, a Mercantile Court, where the judge has hacked down the issues list, or struck out a statement of case for failure to comply with the Practice Direction to Part 31 CPR or made a draconian case management order with costs assessed immediately and payable in 14 days.

I have not seen one yet, which means either that the judges are not making the orders (they will, they will) or that they are properly hanging their orders on at least two of the overriding objective factors, causing counsel to advise that a robust Court of Appeal is unlikely to interfere. It might, of course, be that everyone is now complying with that hidden but important Practice Direction. Continue reading →

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Summation of e-disclosure responsibilities

Posted on May 31, 2008 by Chris Dale

Wolters Kluwer, owners of CT Summation, invited me to speak on 20 May as part of their series of thought-leadership talks. The subject was e-Disclosure costs and responsibilities: a primer for in-house and external counsel. I had adopted the theme of responsibility as my central prediction for the year (see Predicting litigation responsibility for 2008), and I spoke briefly about it at ILTA Insight 2008. I was glad of the opportunity to expand on the theme. Continue reading →

Posted in Australian courts, Case Management, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Disclosure Statement, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Litigation Support, Summation | Leave a comment

Where were the lawyers at IQPC?

Posted on May 30, 2008 by Chris Dale

The potential audience for these musing ranges from large London firms with Terabytes of data for review down to much smaller firms with modest volumes and budgets to match. A report of a two-day, high-end conference in London will resonate more towards the higher end. Its gist, however, is that what the biggest firms and their clients are doing today, the next tier down will be expected to know about tomorrow. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, Document Retention, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, IQPC, Legal Technology, Litigation Readiness, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

It works, Judge, trust us

Posted on May 30, 2008 by Chris Dale

US Magistrate Judge the Honorable Andrew Peck here makes his third appearance in this blog in as many days, following his appearances at the IQPC Information Retention and E-Disclosure Management conference last week.

There is a note about his reputation as one who moves cases along at a blinding pace in my post Guidance on benefits of e-Disclosure and there is a report of his attitude to pleas about EU privacy laws in Whose discovery rules would you rather break?. He also had some useful observations about the conduct of discovery in US courts which, although different in so many ways from our own (right down to having apparently different meanings of the word “proportionality”), nevertheless have enough in common for judicial commentary to travel well – in both directions. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, FRCP, IQPC, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Whose discovery rules would you rather break?

Posted on May 30, 2008 by Chris Dale

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t is the dilemma which faces many who are responsible for document production simultaneously in more than one jurisdiction. The subject was covered in some of the sessions at IQPC’s Information Retention and E-Disclosure Management conference in London last week, most comprehensively in an interesting hypothetical situation run by Tracey Stretton of Kroll OnTrack and Tahir Khan of Addleshaw Goddard involving a complex set of international transactions, transatlantic implications, litigation and regulation all in one go.

I will not attempt a summary – just to mention it is enough to remind you that those multi-jurisdictional elements require a multi-dimensional approach, and not only in multi-million Dollar claims. Continue reading →

Posted in Courts, Data Protection, Discovery, Document Retention, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, FRCP, IQPC, Kroll, Litigation Readiness, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Limitations on document retention

Posted on May 29, 2008 by Chris Dale

There are certain apparent truisms which fall from the mouths of some of those involved in disclosure / discovery / document retention which it seems pointless to correct. They are not wrong, exactly, or are at least founded in something which is not wrong, but are summaries so concise as to conceal the complexities of the reality.

You must disclose all documents relevant to the matters in issue is the one which comes my way most often. Useful word, relevant, and actually quite difficult to avoid when describing in general terms what makes a document disclosable in UK litigation. What makes it wrong, despite its usefulness, is that it was a term of art in pre-CPR (that is, pre-1999) discovery (the actual words were relating to matters in question) and its use now obscures the fact that the present test does not merely use different words, but actually means something very much narrower than the old Peruvian Guano test (see Relevant is irrelevant for disclosure). Continue reading →

Posted in Court Rules, CPR, Data Protection, Discovery, Document Retention, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Ernst & Young, IQPC, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

People the weakest link in data security

Posted on May 29, 2008 by Chris Dale

One of those truisms about data handling, on which I have written from time to time, is that security breaches and data loss derive more usually from personal stupidity than from the failure of technology.

Caroline Flint, the Housing Minister notable more for the quality of her legs than the acuity of her mind, perfectly illustrated this recently, when she strode along Downing Street exposing not the famous thighs (that was the week before) but the front page of a confidential document which she was about to read to the Cabinet. Continue reading →

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Guidance on benefits of e-Disclosure Project

Posted on May 25, 2008 by Chris Dale

If it was slightly embarrassing to find myself the principal subject-matter of a speaker session at the IQPC Information Retention and E-Disclosure Management Conference last week, it is even more so to have the task of writing about it afterwards. But in giving over his speaker slot to a description of my e-Disclosure Information Project, Patrick Burke of Guidance Software neatly encapsulated the reasons why it is needed and why it deserves support, and it is perhaps easier to report what he said than to say it for myself.

It is also an opportunity to show that what is discussed at heavy-weight international conferences of e-Disclosure has a close bearing on what happens in UK courts and on what affects everyday litigation here. Continue reading →

Posted in Australian courts, Case Management, CaseLogistix, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Epiq Systems, FoxData, Guidance Software, IQPC, Law Society, LexisNexis, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Guidance Software white paper launched at IQPC

Posted on May 24, 2008 by Chris Dale

My white paper for Guidance Software The Place for EnCase® eDiscovery in Electronic Disclosure for Major Corporations in UK Courts was launched yesterday at the IQPC Information Retention and E-Disclosure Management Conference by Patrick Burke, Assistant General Counsel at Guidance. Continue reading →

Posted in E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Guidance Software, IQPC, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

First Law Society seminar on e-Disclosure

Posted on May 15, 2008 by Chris Dale

On Tuesday I gave the first in a series of ten regional talks on e-disclosure for the Law Society to an audience of 70 or so solicitors in London.

My starting point was the CPR requirements and powers – what they are and how the courts are using them. In that context, I stressed two things – that none of the powers are new and that, whilst the Commercial Court may be the formal test-bed for more rigourous practices, the rules apply everywhere. There are new pending developments – the proposed Technology Questionnaire and the formalisation of (inter alia) the disclosure obligations in a standard draft directions order – but the defence “these rules are very new and there is no case law” is not going to find a sympathetic hearing at Case Management Conferences, not least because the relevant rules have been in place since 2005. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, CaseMap, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, LexisNexis, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

E-disclosure conferences and seminars 2008

Posted on May 12, 2008 by Chris Dale

I have updated on my web site the list of conferences, seminars and similar events known to me for 2008, with hyperlinks to the programmes where they are available.

I have left up the programmes for the past events, since between them they give a good idea of what people are interested in and what are thought to be the key topics for this year. I say that because conference organisers have a good eye for what is topical, and those which I am involved with (which is most of them) have done an impressive amount of research. Continue reading →

Posted in Australian courts, Case Management, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, Document Retention, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, ILTA, ILTA Insight, IQPC, Law Society, Litigation Readiness, Litigation Support, The Lawyer | Leave a comment

Bringing International Discovery home to all

Posted on May 8, 2008 by Chris Dale

What is the relevance to UK solicitors of a presentation on International Discovery delivered recently by an Australian in Las Vegas? The answer lies in 200 documents – for that is the new mandatory threshold in Australia for using e-Disclosure in litigation. Every litigator should go to at least one e-disclosure conference this year to find out about a set of issues and solutions which are universal.

Those of us interested in promoting cost-effective discovery / disclosure in litigation must keep an eye on developments in other jurisdictions. Knowing what works and what does not work in the US or Australia is important. Discovery is well beyond the Wild West stage, but it is still an area in which the frontiers expand very quickly. New problems meet new solutions, both technical and procedural, and we need to know what others are doing. Continue reading →

Posted in Australian courts, Case Management, CaseMap, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, eDiscovery Tools, Electronic disclosure, IQPC, Law Society, Legal Technology, LexisNexis, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Summation thought-leadership

Posted on May 6, 2008 by Chris Dale

As I have already mentioned, Summation is back in the UK and aiming for a share of the growing market here.

Since I don’t actually sell software solutions, my interest in “the market” is driven by the underlying causes of market growth rather than by the turnover for its own sake. The business success of the various players is an objective measure of the progress which is being made towards encouraging lawyers and their clients to handle electronic documents electronically – a progress which is the objective function of the e-Disclosure Information Project.

Wolters Kluwer, who now own CT Summation, are organising a series of Thought Leadership seminars and have one coming up on 20 May called E-Disclosure Primer for In-House and External Counsel. It is being led by Nigel Murray of Trilantic and by me. The chosen topic is the increasingly significant one of responsibility – responsibility, that is, to clients, courts and shareholders. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Disclosure Statement, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Litigation Support, Summation, Trilantic | Leave a comment

The Litigation Support Marketplace

Posted on May 2, 2008 by Chris Dale

Independent consultant Andrew Haslam of AllVision has published an excellent summary of what the litigation support market holds. Called The Litigation Support Marketplace – an Analytical Framework, it surveys the problems and the solutions which exist to solve them.

You get the flavour it from its conclusion: Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Keywords not always the key to disclosure

Posted on May 1, 2008 by Chris Dale

How useful are keywords in refining document populations? They can be a blunt instrument, but it may be proportionate to use blunt instruments as long as everyone involved is aware of the method used. What does it all mean to the man on the Birmingham omnibus?

It may be reasonable to search some or all of the parties’ electronic storage systems. In some circumstances, it may be reasonable to search for electronic documents by means of keyword searches (agreed as far as possible between the parties) even where a full review of each and every document would be unreasonable. There may be other forms of electronic search that may be appropriate in particular circumstances.

This passage comes from Paragraph 2A.5 of the Practice Direction to Part 31 CPR where it is part of the expanded definition of the scope of a reasonable search. It is all a bit clunky, really, in that this part of the PD was a belated add-on to Rule 31.7 CPR (the duty of search) and actually repeats part of that section. At the least, it is tiresome to have two overlapping sources for the same obligation. At worst, this is one of the reasons for the tacit agreement to ignore the whole subject which has been the norm hitherto. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, DocuMatrix, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Epiq Systems, FRCP, Litigation Support, Recommind | Leave a comment

HMCS workshops on electronic filing

Posted on April 25, 2008 by Chris Dale

HM Courts Service is running workshops in Birmingham and London on how electronic filing and document management (EFDM) will work in the civil and family courts. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Courts, HM Courts Service, Law Society | Leave a comment

Judge has more than one interest in trees

Posted on April 24, 2008 by Chris Dale

A letter in yesterday’s Times throws a new light on the interest which His Honour Judge Simon Brown QC has in electronic disclosure. As regular readers know, Judge Brown is an enthusiastic proponent of cutting down litigation costs by tight management of disclosure. His letter, “Planes to refresh the city’s masses” was prompted by a recent Times article about cutting down trees – or rather, about not cutting them down because of the value attributable to them under the new Cavat scheme. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, Discovery, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Legal Technology, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

XBundle lifts bar to electronic court bundles

Posted on April 24, 2008 by Chris Dale

It has been observed unkindly that a high proportion of my research seems to be done in bars. I find them good places to pick up information, especially if everyone else drinks and I do not. Perhaps it is less to do with drink and more with not being in an office – today’s assignation with a software company is in a patisserie, for example. It was at a bar, a while back now, that I met Robert Onslow, who stuck in the mind as the only software developer I know who is at the other kind of bar.

Robert combines a busy practice as a barrister specialising in IP and computer–related cases with the development of a software application called XBundle. He and fellow-director Andrew Steven had come up with an idea for replicating electronically the paper bundles which Robert used in court. The concept was simple. The only target was to achieve an efficient electronic substitute for the paper bundles. Anything which went further than that was ruled out. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Legal Technology, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Insider gremlins being fixed

Posted on April 21, 2008 by Chris Dale

My surmise as to why January’s edition of Legal Technology Insider has come back to haunt us seems to have been correct (see Gremlins delay warning of EDD trolls).

Charles Christian writes at once to say that a bug in the system of their EX internet service provider keeps re-sending December and January’s editions.

The April edition will be out later this week.

Home

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Gremlins delay warning of EDD trolls

Posted on April 21, 2008 by Chris Dale

Giving your predictions for the year at the end of April is a bit like going to the bookies as the Grand National field crosses the Melling Road for the second time (not that that would have done you much good this year). Looking more closely, I see that the edition of Legal Technology Insider which hit my In Box this morning is that from January, and I can see from the header that it was indeed sent on 23 January.

That would pose an interesting conundrum for a lawyer examining the metadata in his opponent’s electronic disclosure, especially as I got the January message in January as well. I suspect that a Gremlin has intervened as an ISP somewhere along the line restored an old backup.

Nevertheless, as I read it with a growing sense of déju vu, I came across an article I missed on my first reading. It was by Simon Price of Recommind and was headed Dinosaurs and trolls in 2008. I am seeing Simon Price on Thursday, so I thought I ought to read it. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Guidance Software, Legal Technology, Litigation Support, Recommind | Leave a comment

Aural Guidance on e-Disclosure

Posted on April 21, 2008 by Chris Dale

Something called the e-Disclosure Information Project is necessarily interested in exploring beyond the traditional speaking and writing ways of getting that information across, and this year has brought a number of recorded opportunities.

The Project is a loose confederation of a consultant, a judge and a litigation lawyer – me, HHJ Simon Brown QC and Mark Surguy of Pinsent Masons – plus those who sponsor my time (effectively all of my time now) in keeping the information flowing. One of the most active of the sponsors is Guidance Software, whose Patrick Burke was described to me last week (by someone who did not know I knew him) as being willing to go anywhere to find out about, and speak about, e-disclosure in any jurisdiction.

The common thread here is that each of Judge Brown, Mark Surguy and I have recently taken part in recorded sessions – podcasts and webinars – in company with Guidance Software. You may like to hear them. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Guidance Software, Legal Technology, LexisNexis, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

ILTA 2008: e-Disclosure – the next risky business

Posted on April 17, 2008 by Chris Dale

This was the title of the second e-disclosure session at ILTA INSIGHT 2008 in London – the first was on Judicial training in e-Disclosure. George Rudoy of Shearman & Sterling, and UK e-disclosure consultant Andrew Haslam talked about risk management, with Sally Gonzalez of Michael Farrell Group as Moderator.

The disclosure of electronic evidence is becoming a major expense for corporates, and a major revenue stream for lawyers and providers of technical and related services. Forrester Research estimates that the business will be worth $4.8 billion by 2011, whatever efforts are made by the courts to contain this expense.

There is corresponding competition to capture this revenue as between the lawyers and the outsourced providers, with corresponding interest on the part of some corporates to keep as much of the work in house as they can. Continue reading →

Posted in Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, ILTA Insight, Legal Technology, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Standard Mercantile Court Directions

Posted on April 17, 2008 by Chris Dale

The old cliches are the best of course, and I feel just now that we have reached the summit after pushing snow uphill for years (15 years in my case). The snowball is poised to roll downhill, gathering momentum and bulk as it goes.

His Honour Judge Simon Brown QC, a Designated Mercantile Judge at the Birmingham Civil Justice Centre, has today released a standard form of directions for use in all Mercantile Courts. It will be sent out electronically to all parties once the defence has been filed. As well as compelling a focus on issues, it includes a direction which implicitly reminds parties of their obligations under Paragraph 2A.2 of the Practice Direction to Part 31– the obligation to discuss any issues arising from searches for electronic documents. That, of course, should already have been done before the first CMC. Continue reading →

Posted in Australian courts, Case Management, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Law Society, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

ILTA 2008: judicial training in e-disclosure

Posted on April 17, 2008 by Chris Dale

I have already given an overview of the excellent ILTA INSIGHT 2008 conference in London yesterday (ILTA 2008 – not just another e-disclosure conference). Two sessions dealt with electronic disclosure.

The first was given by Mark Surguy of Pinsent Masons, His Honour Judge Simon Brown QC and me, and covered the advances which we are making in promoting awareness of e-disclosure to courts and practitioners. The second, which will be reported separately, concerned the management of risk in an e-disclosure context. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Disclosure Statement, Discovery, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Guidance Software, ILTA, ILTA Insight, Legal Technology, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

ILTA – not just another e-disclosure conference

Posted on April 16, 2008 by Chris Dale

When the Director of Global Practice Technology & Information Services at Shearman & Sterling describes what we are doing in the Birmingham Mercantile Court as “leap-frogging the US in e-disclosure”, you begin to think you might be getting somewhere.

George Rudoy, named as the 2007 “Champion of Technology” by Law Technology News, was kind enough to make the observation after hearing Mark Surguy of Pinsent Masons, His Honour Judge Simon Brown QC and me speak at ILTA Insight 2008 yesterday. It matters because it is very much part of our aim to bring the standards of large international firms to smaller UK players, and to identify the best practices of any jurisdiction and fashion them to serve the interests of civil justice across the UK. The ambition does not end with importing ideas from elsewhere; we hope to make a big enough mark on the way litigation is run that others will want to follow us. Judge Brown has made a start on that with his spirited debate on Broadway in February (see UK judge flies e-Disclosure flag in New York) . Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, ILTA Insight, Legal Technology, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

What do people actually do in e-disclosure?

Posted on April 12, 2008 by Chris Dale

What began as an analysis of women in e-disclosure turns into the idea of writing about the daily work of people of all kinds whose work involves e-disclosure. The aim is to make the business of e-disclosure more approachable both to new recruits and to clients.

This is not, as you might think from its title, an article about human-computer interaction, though I have recently met Dr Simon Attfield of UCL, whose discipline this is, and who is working with Freshfields and LexisNexis on the subject. More on his work in due course.

It is more prompted by some of the reactions I have picked up to my pieces on Women in e-Discovery, and by conversations about customer perceptions of litigation support. The linking element is my strong view that part of the reason for the slow take-up of electronic disclosure in the UK is that it is seen as the province of hardcore techies, and male ones at that. In fact it is primarily a business–driven function, and women already have a strong presence on all sides of the business. Continue reading →

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Law Society regional e-Disclosure training

Posted on April 11, 2008 by Chris Dale

The Law Society has just published the programme and venue listings for its electronic disclosure training series under the title E-disclosure – the rules, the practice and the benefits. This begins in London on 13 May and goes to Birmingham, Manchester, Cambridge, Nottingham, Southampton, Bristol, Cardiff, Newcastle and ends in Leeds on 9 July.

This is of significance to me for three reasons – one, it shows the Law Society’s commitment to a subject which can no longer be ignored by solicitors who practice litigation in any court in the UK; two, it is the first serious attempt to carry the message out to those who cannot easily attend the e-disclosure conferences in London; and three, I am the one giving the talks. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Electronic disclosure, Law Society, Litigation Support, Millnet | Leave a comment

ILTA INSIGHT 2008

Posted on April 10, 2008 by Chris Dale

ILTA INSIGHT 2008 takes place on 15 April at the Hilton London Tower Bridge. I will be speaking there with Mark Surguy of Pinsent Masons and HHJ Simon Brown QC in a session to report on the progress which has been made on the management of electronic disclosure since the three of us met last year.

We have run a training session for 14 judges in Birmingham, addressed two packed meetings of local practitioners there organised by the Law Society and made, or been booked to make, a number of speeches, podcasts, and webinars on this subject. In addition, I write about every possible aspect of the subject and take every opportunity to connect with anyone interested in the subject. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Disclosure Statement, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, ILTA, Legal Technology, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

E-discovery progress in Australia

Posted on April 9, 2008 by Chris Dale

There is a more than theoretical interest in what is happening in disclosure in other jurisdictions. We are all facing the same challenges, and it is helpful to know what the problems, and the perceived solutions, are in far-away places – Scotland, for example, the US or Australia.

I mention Scotland because it came up last week when I met Bob Wiss of LexisNexis who was talking about CaseMap. There seems to be a wave of interest amongst Scottish lawyers in using CaseMap to relate the facts, documents and people to the issues in a case. I hope to go up to Edinburgh soon to find out what is happening there, not just with CaseMap but generally on the e-Disclosure front.

The US experience is by no means all about awful warnings as to what to avoid, and there is regular two-way exchange of information between the US and UK. Although the limelight gets hogged by big cases fought between giant firms over vast document populations, the majority of cases in the US are routine affairs handled by small firms, whose experiences – and costs constraints – are not at all remote from those of modest-sized firms in the UK. Continue reading →

Posted in Australian courts, Case Management, CaseMap, Court Rules, Courts, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, eDiscovery Tools, LexisNexis, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Attracting readers for electronic disclosure

Posted on April 9, 2008 by Chris Dale

I do not have any sophisticated means of tracking the visitors to this blog, but WordPress shows me which pages have been read how many times and allows me to distinguish between real views and those made by crawlers and the like. The tracker which gives it its statistics is Google Analytics which is known to err (and sometimes seriously so) on the side of understating visitors. I am not here so much interested in absolute numbers as in relative ones – what posts encourage people in?

According to the under-counting Google Analytics, visitors have been running at an average of about 1350 per month or 45 per day. This is no doubt trivial compared with the Orange Rag, but Charles Christian writes on a wide range of subjects whereas I cover a very narrow niche (I also have a web site whose numbers I am not including here). I can assume that everyone who comes here intends to come here – you don’t wander into a site about e-Disclosure by accident. I can also assume that no-one reads the same article twice, and I can see that a reasonable number of hits derive from searches rather than from repeat visits by regular visitors. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, CaseMap, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Epiq Systems, Litigation Support, SEO, Web Sites and Blogs | Leave a comment

Relevant is irrelevant to standard Disclosure

Posted on April 9, 2008 by Chris Dale

I spend a sadly disproportionate amount of my life touring the Web with the aid of Google, looking for things which are relevant to disclosure of documents, and in particular electronic disclosure.

Look, I even talk like Part 31 of the CPR – I can’t get through an opening sentence without using words like “disproportionate” and “relevant”. But, of course, “relevant” is neither here nor there in deciding whether a document is to be disclosed – is it?

The subject comes up because I have just stumbled on the e-Disclosure web page of a large and very well-known firm. Two things caught my eye. One was the assertion that the documents which must be disclosed are all those which are “relevant” – they even put “relevant” in quotation marks as if to imply that they had taken it from the rules themselves. The other is that the Civil Procedure Rules have nothing expressly dealing with electronic documents. One of these assertions is misleadingly wrong. The other was true when the article was written, but is no longer true. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDisclosure Conferences, eDiscovery, ILTA, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Finding out more about Women in Discovery

Posted on April 8, 2008 by Chris Dale

I did a short post last night about a Women in eDiscovery London Group which I heard about in a pub (you would be surprised how much of what goes in my blog is picked up in pubs). My request for information has been speedily picked up by Laura Kelly of Trilantic, who wrote to me with information about the Group and about a forthcoming talk on 24 April by Vince Neicho of Allen & Overy.

Laura writes:

Thank you for picking up about the Women in eDiscovery London Group. I am the Director of this Group and have been talking to the Women of the UK Litigation eDisclosure marketplace on this topic since February of this year. Continue reading →

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Women in e-Discovery

Posted on April 8, 2008 by Chris Dale

Rumour reaches me of the foundation of a UK group called Women in e-Discovery run, I assume, on lines similar to the successful US group of the same name.

I would love to tell you more, but no-one has told me anything about it, so I can’t. My experience of women in e-discovery is that they are just like the men, only tougher and more focused.

If you find out anything about this, perhaps you would let me know.

Home

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Epiq Systems buys Pinpoint Global

Posted on April 8, 2008 by Chris Dale

Epiq Systems, who have recently released DocuMatrix 12, the international version of their document review software, have announced the further expansion of their UK business with the acquisition of Pinpoint Global Ltd. Pinpoint are best known for their proprietary processing / e-disclosure solutions. It is only a few weeks since Epiq acquired ECM, bringing its scanning, coding and general document-handling skills into the Epiq fold. Continue reading →

Posted in Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, Epiq Systems, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

LDM shows CaseMap integration

Posted on April 7, 2008 by Chris Dale

Regular readers will know that I am an enthusiast for CaseMap as a low-cost tool both for its primary purpose – the linking of litigation facts to issues – and as a simple way to handle disclosure. If today’s postings seem CaseMap heavy, that is because there were two CaseMap events last week.

The first was a visit to show it to HHJ Simon Brown QC at the Birmingham Civil Justice Centre, which I describe in a separate post (Judge how CaseMap gets to the issues). The second was a meeting of the CaseMap user group in London on Friday. The speakers were Bob Wiss, co-founder of CaseSoft, Christine Tomas of LDM and Dr Tony Cox, who gives expert evidence on health and safety matters, mainly to do with mechanical engineering. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, CaseMap, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, LexisNexis, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

Judge how CaseMap gets to the issues

Posted on April 7, 2008 by Chris Dale

I went to Birmingham last week with LexisNexis to show a judge what CaseMap can do. Why is it important for judges to see solutions like this, and what is CaseMap’s role in handling the issues in litigation?

Part of the aim of the E-Disclosure Information Project, of which this blog is a part, is to introduce to each other as many as possible of the people, things and concepts which have some role in the disclosure aspects of case management.

Some of these matchings are more obvious than others. I work with lawyers to look at how the CPR can work for them. I introduce people who have a problem to solve to providers who might have the answer. I pick up ideas from one discussion, one web site or one jurisdiction, and drop them into another. This much is a fairly obvious use of resources, information, contacts and knowledge, and seems to be appreciated.

Less obvious is the introduction of technology solutions to judges. Judges can neither buy nor recommend solutions, so it might seem on the face of it a waste of time on everyone’s part for suppliers and judges to spend time together. I disagree. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, CaseMap, Commercial Court, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Discovery, E-Discovery Suppliers, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, LexisNexis, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

LiST publishes draft Disclosure Statement

Posted on April 4, 2008 by Chris Dale

The LiST Group has published a draft revised Disclosure Statement on its Publications page. The draft was submitted to the DCA (as was) in 2006 with a view to kick-starting a discussion about this under-regarded element in the disclosure process. As with their other contributions, LiST got a polite acknowledgement and no more. As electronic disclosure comes back onto the agenda, it is a good time to raise the subject again. Continue reading →

Posted in Case Management, Court Rules, Courts, CPR, Disclosure Statement, Discovery, eDisclosure, eDiscovery, LiST, Litigation Support | Leave a comment

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