Identify early and co-operate in 2009

As I sign off for Christmas, I would like to thank all those who have sponsored, supported or in any other way encouraged the e-Disclosure Information Project in 2008 and wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

It is only a month since I did a round up to cover the Project’s first birthday. Since then, we have had yet a third new e-disclosure case in the UK, Abela v Hammonds, and LDSI has joined the sponsors.

There is already a great deal planned for next year: the conference diary is filling up; my Law Society seminar tour will take up again; there should be a good UK showing at LegalTech in New York; there are plans afoot for co-operation with US, Australian and Canadian judges, rule makers and thought leaders with, I hope; a visit to each of these countries in March/April; there is a Technology Questionnaire to launch and a Practice Direction to draft; I hope to repeat in other UK cities the talk we gave in Birmingham at which we showed judges, barristers and solicitors some of the applications which are used in electronic disclosure; Vince Neicho of Allen & Overy and I are plotting an e-disclosure conference on our own model; with the Project format now established, I am looking forward to yet more interaction with its sponsors; as well as going to see and speak to people on their own patches in the UK and abroad, I hope to entice more visitors to come to Oxford and kick ideas around on Port Meadow, as I have done several times this year.

US-EU wars over privacy and discovery

Americans who do not sympathise with EU notions of private information need to learn some European history and to understand how the UK government’s erosion of personal liberty makes us cling to such privacy as we have left

I am obliged to the US site Gabe’s Guide for a pointer to an article in the National Law Journal about the clash between EU privacy and data protection laws and US e-discovery. The Gabe’s post is illustrated by a photograph of a big sign saying “Road Block Ahead” which echoes something I have said elsewhere: that whilst EU privacy is merely a bump in the road to EU lawyers – something else to identify and deal with – it can be a complete bar to US lawyers fighting in US courts (see Foreign collections need more than just big feet).

The US courts seem to us somewhat contemptuous of European notions of privacy, and their attitude is aptly described as “the second worst form of US imperialism”. I wrote about this in an article called Whose discovery rules would you rather break? in which I said that one US judge’s approach – perfectly proper by his own court’s rules – could be taken to mean that the “cheese-eating surrender monkeys could stuff their regulations up their blue and white striped blousons so far as his court was concerned”. You hardly need the  backing of the EU data protection laws to want to stymie an  attitude like that.

Mancia: interest in US being interested in them

A growing theme on this site which will get more important in 2009 is that electronic discovery in the US is getting to be of more interest to us in the UK. This is not because the English courts are getting more involved in e-disclosure (they are, but that is not why we are paying more attention to the US). The new interest derives from US Opinions which have wider and more universal messages than hitherto.

Americans can pound each other to bits over “spoliation” and “defensibility” and we could not be more bored. Nor do we really want to be told how to do it at a judicial level (but we love the technology, thanks). That is in part because there is a growing appreciation that we have some pretty good rules of our own if only anyone would use them, as judges are beginning to – see Digicel, and Abela ( the links are to articles of mine about these English cases).

Audio recordings of SCL e-disclosure seminar

My article Electronic Disclosure: Meeting the Challenge was a report of a seminar presented by the Society for Computers & Law in October. Janet Lambert, Christine Gabitass and I were the speakers under the chairmanship of Clive Freedman.

The sessions were recorded and are available on the SCL web site. Listening to them entitles you to 2.30 CPD hours provided that you can answer some questions at the end.

Given that the Hedrich, Digicel and Abela cases have all been reported since then, some of you may find this a painless way of finding out what the courts expect from you.

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SCL Predictions 2009

Computers & Law, the web site and magazine of the Society for Computers & Law always collect predictions at this time of the year from some of those who work at the intersection of law and computing.

One of mine has come good already, and the old year has yet to expire. I said that Digicel v Cable & Wireless “will have an immediate effect on case management of disclosure”. I reported yesterday (see Getting expert search evidence in front of the court) that the judge in Abela v Hammonds made an order which, like Digicel, required parties to co-operate as to the scope of the electronic sources to be reviewed. Digicel was expressly referred to.

My other predictions related to the wider use of early case assessment applications, the growing understanding that solicitors need to get to know some providers of e-disclosure services, proper use of the Practice Direction to Part 31 CPR and the prospect of clients taking some of their e-disclosure work in house.

These appear on the third page of the 2009 Predictions. See also the first and second pages.

Mancia – US discovery lessons for UK lawyers

Many UK lawyers and judges affect disdain for the American way of litigating and, in particular, for the way US lawyers handle electronic documents. The UK lawyers’ perception that e-disclosure is all very expensive not only confuses cause and effect – it is the existence of the documents which is the primary problem – but blinds them to the constructive criticism which many US lawyers and judges make of their own practice. The problems and most of the (largely US) technical solutions are the same. A look at the similarities in current US thinking might inform our own approach.

The recurring theme in this area in the UK at the moment is the need for two things – getting more and better information about one’s own clients’ documents and a more co-operative approach to working out how to manage disclosure so that the pursuit of justice is not buried by the costs of trying to achieve it. The main stumbling block here is ignorance – there is plenty of expensive gamesmanship being played, but much of the money thrown away is wasted because practitioners know little about the rules and less about the technology.

A takeaway of Digicel tips

The old cliches are the best, and it is fair to say that English judgments about the case management of electronic disclosure are like London buses at the moment. After years with hardly any any reported cases, we have had Hedrich, Digicel and now Abela in quick succession. I am sure that decisions about the scope of electronic disclosure are being made every week, but it is the reporting which is new. The reports in turn give rise to commentary.

The Solicitors Journal carries an article about Digicel by Alex Dunstan-Lee of KPMG Forensic and Ed Sautter of Mayer Brown, both well-known on the subject of e-disclosure. The conclusions they draw from the judgment – (i) gather as much information as possible about the data in question; and (ii) enter into a detailed dialogue with the opposing party regarding that information – are as short an encapsulation as one needs from this case. Both are obligations set out in the rules and in the Practice Direction to Part 31 CPR. Both seem pretty obviously the right thing to do anyway.

Legal Inc and Andrew Haslam to work together

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

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

Getting expert search evidence in front of the court

Yet another important new UK case on electronic disclosure, Abela v Hammonds, reaches me whilst I am listening to a US webinar about searching. The theme of both is knowledge, understanding and expertise – and co-operation to arrive at a proportionate solution

Men famously do not multitask well, but there is too much going on in e-disclosure at the moment to do things in neat sequential steps. I found myself this morning listening to a US webinar on the courts’ requirements for searches for electronic evidence whilst simultaneously reading a new 70 page English judgment on the same topic. This article is not a deeply considered report of either of them, but the coincidence and commonality is worth capturing.

Australian judgment served via Facebook

Lawyers in Australia have served a default judgment on borrowers by sending it via Facebook. The Supreme Court of Australian Capital Territory gave leave for service to be effected in this way because the borrowers had left their last-known address. There was enough information on the Facebook accounts to satisfy the court that the addressees were the right people.

Is Hedrich more important than Digicel for e-disclosure?

A cigarette packet carries the warning that smoking can kill you. Solicitors’ standard terms of business should carry a warning that litigation can cost you. For litigation is an inherently risky business: there are no certain winners; and very often even the fruits of success are never recovered. This is just such a case. The moral is caveat litigator.

This is the opening paragraph of Lord Justice Ward’s judgment in Hedrich v Standard Bank London Ltd [2008] EWCA Civ 905. It is not only the litigating parties who get a strong caveat from this case. Solicitors may conclude that the hairs-breadth which preserved the Claimant’s solicitors from a large wasted costs order in that case might justify a closer understanding of their obligations as to electronic disclosure.

I have not seen it, but the current edition of Civil Procedure News, which comes with the White Book Service, apparently has four headings on the front. One is “Standard disclosure of electronic documents”. The Hedrich and Digicel cases are reported in the “In brief” section, and Digicel is covered in the detail section. I wonder if we might come to see, over time, that Hedrich is the more significant of the two cases.

An Epiq Christmas Party

Christmas parties are a bit thin on the ground this year. To judge by the many reports in the business press of party cancellations, doing without them seems either to be a sign that the petty cash box is empty or an empty gesture designed to show that the company is in tune with the grey zeitgeist.

You get none of that nonsense from Epiq Systems. Leaving empty gestures to the Government and bucking the zeitgeist, Epiq held a party at the City Golf Club.

Webinar: Benchmarking E-Discovery Methods

The webinar anticipated in this post has now taken place. My report on it, and its fortuitous coincidence with a new UK case,  can be found in my post Getting expert evidence in front of the court which also includes a link to the recorded webinar.

H5, the San Francisco company specialising in information retrieval for litigation, investigations and related information management, are giving a webinar on Wednesday 10 December at 1-2 p.m Eastern / 10-11 a.m Pacific time. The full title is Finding a better way to search: Benchmarking E-Discovery Methods.

The premise for the webinar is that lawyers are looking for ways to meet their discovery obligations quickly, cost-effectively and with minimal risk, whilst judges are attaching increasing importance to the way in which searches are conducted – not just the technology but the related sciences of e.g. linguistics and statistics. The perceived importance of this lies in the often-quoted assertion by US Magistrate Judge John Facciola in US v O’Keefe that Given this complexity, for lawyers and judges to dare opine that a certain search term or terms would be more likely to produce information than the terms that were used is truly to go where angels fear to tread.

Reviewing the Commercial Court Recommendations

The risk that contentious work might shift to arbitration or to other jurisdictions such as Germany is reason enough for us to fight to keep it here. The Commercial Court Long Trials Recommendations may have had too wide a focus. Attention to the costs of disclosure, with help from a new generation of Early Case Assessment tools and a pooling of ideas with Australia and Canada may be the next step

On 2 December, the City of London Law Society considered the impact of the Commercial Court Long Trials Recommendations at an open meeting held at Freshfields. I usually go to any such events but had not picked up that it was happening – not the only thing I was in the dark about on that day, since someone drilled through a mains cable at breakfast-time and I was without power till far into the night. I would at least have kept warm if I had gone to the meeting. I am grateful to Mark Surguy of Pinsent Masons in Birmingham for a summary of what was said.

Ignorance of mainstream technology may cost you

Internet telephony, like litigation technology, is now accessible and affordable. Ignoring VOIP merely passes up the chance to cut your telephone bill. Ignoring litigation technology may cost you rather more. The problems, and the solutions, are the same everywhere

A male who bought his first PC shortly after they first came on the market and who has been a software developer might be regarded with some suspicion when he tries to induce others to use technology. You could look at it the other way, of course, and reckon that if someone imbued with office computer technology since its infancy still finds some of it near-magical in its power, then it might be worth a look.

This was brought to mind by two phone calls I received in close succession across midnight on Saturday. At that time of night it is the middle of the day in West Coast America and early morning in Victoria, Australia. My first call was from Browning Marean of DLA Piper US LLP in San Diego and the second was from Geoffrey Lambert of KordaMentha in Melbourne. Both were by VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) and the total of two hours’ crystal-clear conversation with opposite corners of the world cost none of us anything.

The revolutionary consequences of Digicel

The importance of Digicel v Cable & Wireless lies not in any new law and still less in allocating blame for the outcome. We cannot predict its consequences but what matters is that everyone now knows about the Practice Direction to Part 31 CPR

Zhou Enlai, first Premier of the People’s Republic of China, when asked to assess the importance of the French Revolution, famously replied that it was “too early to say”. Similarly, I do not feel in any great rush to say what the long-term effect will be of Digicel (St Lucia) Ltd v Cable and Wireless plc [2008] EWHC 2522 (Ch), [2008] All ER (D) 226 (Oct), Chancery Division, Morgan J., 23 October 2008 (thanks to ignorant politicians and the damage caused by trendy educationalists, it is probably necessary to explain for the benefit of anyone under 40 that the French Revolution began in 1789 and that Zhou Enlai died in 1976).

E-Disclosure Information Project first birthday

November marks the first anniversary of what became the E-Disclosure Information Project. It did not have that name when I ran a half-day training session for judges in Birmingham last November but it was effectively launched with that event. This Commentary began a year or so earlier.

That first session was made possible by generous support from forensic collections expert FoxData whose Ian Manning has continued to back what I do, by turning out to speak and with useful information and introductions as well as financially. Tyrone Edward, now at Ernst & Young Forensic Technology & Discovery Services, made the suggestion for a business model which has allowed me to spend substantially all my time on spreading information about electronic disclosure. The Project is sponsored by the companies whose logos appear here, but on the basis that it is independent and product-agnostic.

The main outputs from the e-Disclosure Information Project are what I write here and on my website, and conferences. There are 228 posts on this site. None of them are simple regurgitations of press releases – PRs are invaluable sources of hard information, but I am more interested in the context and the implications of a software or services initiative than in the bare words of a press release.