Nigel Murray makes it to Paris

Hands up all all those who were not convinced that Nigel Murray of Trilantic would manage the 350 miles from the Normandy Beaches to Paris. On a bicycle. In six days. Here is the photograph to prove you wrong.

Nigel Murray arrives in Paris

Back in January, I wrote rather cynically that “I did once see him run, but that was across a pavement to a cab in the rain, so barely counts as an exception to the general rule”, the general rule involving good food, beer and cigarettes. I did not doubt he would do it, though.

The cause was Help for Heroes which supports wounded servicemen. Nigel raised £5,727.87 for this good cause. The event overall has apparently raised over one million pounds.

Nigel kept a record of each day’s events, covering both the cycling and the interesting – and, I suspect, rather emotive – stops which were made at places of significance. His donations page remains open for those who want to help him get past the £6,000 mark.

Well done, Nigel.

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Ian Manning now at Raposa Consulting

As regular readers will know, Ian Manning was the initial sponsor of the e-Disclosure Information Project, providing continued support despite his never-ending overseas travel commitments for FoxData Ltd.   Ian’s extensive experience in forensic collections for commercial litigation and regulatory enquiries has provided valuable market intelligence to the Project as well as many e-disclosure anecdotes which have served as the basis for after-dinner conversations.

The point of all this is to explain to those familiar with my web site and blog the changes you will no doubt notice on it.  Ian’s management association with FoxData Ltd ceased at the end of March 2009.  However, as I hoped, Ian is keen to continue his personal support for the e-Disclosure Information Project.  This support will come via his company Raposa Consulting Ltd.

To find out more about Raposa Consulting go to www.raposadata.com

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Jackson launches costs management trial in Birmingham

Lord Justice Jackson went to Birmingham on Tuesday to encourage its litigation solicitors to take part in a costs management trial in the specialist courts. The details are interesting, but less so than the policy considerations which underlay Sir Rupert’s approach to the business sector – the Small and Medium Enterprises or SMEs – which is one of his (many) particular concerns. I went to hear him – my interest in the rules and the technology of e-disclosure is infinite, but it is servant to a wider interest in making litigation accessible. “Accessible” means that it is affordable to the clients and still profitable to the lawyers.

I gave up marking the key passages as Sir Rupert outlined the scope of this part of his investigation – it was all important. For those with short attention-spans, I will leap to the end and report that the upshot was that the majority of the assembled company were willing to support a voluntary trial during which judges in the Mercantile Court and the Technology & Construction Court would supplement their case management role by managing costs in tandem with (or, strictly, as part of) their close attention to the other aspects of bringing a case to trial. Not everyone supported the idea, but no-one opposed it. Sir Rupert’s gentle lucidity barely concealed the implication that if this approach did not work then something more drastic will be needed. If it does not work in Birmingham, it would not work anywhere.

Hard to keep up with Lord Justice Jackson

I went to Birmingham on Tuesday evening to hear Lord Justice Jackson launch a new costs management initiative in the Specialist Courts there, and got a taste of the energy which has brought us his Preliminary Report on Civil Litigation Costs so quickly.

As the main part of the meeting drew to a close, he rounded up a small team to finalise a form of spreadsheet costs template, saying airily that if it was not finished that night it could be concluded in the morning. Whether he actually intended to keep them there all night or  stay overnight in Birmingham and resume in the morning was not clear, but his comment obviously concentrated minds and it was done within the hour.

I parted company with him at 7.30pm at New Street Station, and his Guidelines, reporting on the meeting and setting out how the trial would work, were completed at 09.52 the following morning (you see, document metadata does have its uses).

My own report on the meeting (which covered points of wider significance than the costs management trial itself) is being patched together on train journeys and will not be out for a bit – I cannot compete with this production rate. You may be interested in the meantime to read the Guidelines and to see the Costs Estimate Template.

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Mock e-Disclosure hearing photographs

For those who have already seen the post about our mock e-disclosure hearing at IQPC last week, I have now added some photographs to it.

They and others can also be found here. They were all taken by Sonia Perez of Guidance Software.

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Making a play to sugar the e-disclosure pill

In a previous post (The discovery of disclosure commonality with a trans-Atlantic judicial panel)  I told how IQPC had, at my suggestion,  invited US Magistrate Judge John Facciola and Chief US Magistrate Judge Paul Grimm to come to their Information Retention and E-Discovery Management Conference last week and then asked me how I would like to make use of their talents.

One answer was the trans-Atlantic judicial panel which I described in that post, with Senior Master Whitaker, HHJ Simon Brown QC, Judge Grimm, Judge Facciola and me, moderated by Patrick Burke of Guidance Software. I have long wanted to do a mock e-disclosure hearing and this seemed a perfect opportunity. I saw one a couple of years ago in London in which Judge Facciola played – naturally – a judge. That had aimed at both US and UK procedures simultaneously and had, I thought, fallen between two stools in doing so. I wanted to do one under the English rules. We have had three cases recently – Digicel v Cable & Wireless, Abela v Hammond Suddards and Hedrich v Standard Bank London which had shown the downsides of not following the co-operation obligations under the Practice Direction to Part 31 CPR. Judge Grimm and Judge Facciola have been eloquent in their criticism of those who do not co-operate to reduce costs and who do not display the level of competence required of those who practice litigation. Why not cast them as the judge hearing an application by advocates who fell short of those standards, using facts similar to those of the English cases?

The discovery of disclosure commonality with a trans-Atlantic judicial panel

If I were to define a perfect working day it would go something like this: wake up in a comfortable hotel and take a five minute stroll to Piccadilly; sit on a platform with the two leading US and the two leading UK e-discovery judges and discuss developments in the two jurisdictions; go and see Lord Justice Jackson to discuss the e-disclosure parts of his report; take part in the premiere of your first play, a courtroom drama in which the judges are played by judges and the advocates by people whose life has been spent at the bar; then dine at Rules before going home with the sense, which others seem to share, that the disclosure world has moved on a bit that day.

It sounds all right as a way of passing the time, does it not? So that is what I did on Thursday, on Day 2 of IQPC’s Information Retention and E-Discovery Management Conference. I am but the Boswell to the distinguished set of Dr Johnsons who took part in all this and my main contribution was made months ago. I am on the Advisory Board for the conference, and Sarah Haynes of IQPC rang me up and asked which US judge should be asked to take part in the judicial panel which Guidance Software were intending to run. “Ask Grimm or Facciola” I said, much as one might say “Get Kidman or Jolie” for a film, or “Ask Rooney or Ferdinand” round to play football. Sarah rang back a few days later and said “They are coming – what would you like them to do?”

Everything and everyone at the IQPC Information Retention and E-Discovery Management Conference

I reached IQPC’s Information Retention and E-Discovery Management  Conference 2009 just as the first speaker stood up on Wednesday morning, feeling rather like Phileas Fogg as he burst into the Reform Club with seconds to spare. Although I had not been round the world in 80 days, it felt like it after the 4336 miles overnight from Orlando (see posts here and here as to why I was in Orlando). At least it was warm and sunny in London, unlike damp, dank Florida.

The IQPC e-discovery conference is one of the best in the London calendar, as much for the people one meets there as for the content. At my first, two years ago, I was introduced to three people on one day who have directly contributed to what I do now. Victor Limongelli, now CEO of Guidance Software, gave the first talk I had heard which drew attention to the similarities and differences between US and UK procedure and practice. Master Whitaker spoke rather pessimistically about the difficulties of persuading judges and practitioners that the proper court management of electronic documents was vital to control litigation costs. Mark Surguy of Pinsent Masons talked about the need for lawyers to understand technology and to get to know some providers of software and services who could help them.

An old-fashioned huddle colloquium

My title comes from what appears to be an automatic translation of one of my recent articles which I came across on a site called 123people. What it has been translated into and by whom remains a mystery. My son Charlie Dale found it because it references him. It is called The untapped premature of YouTube as a promotional method and should be read alongside the source article The untapped potential of YouTube as a promotional medium.

The first paragraph turns this:

Lord Justice Jackson will do his launch tomorrow with an old-fashioned press conference.

…into this:

Lord Justice Jackson determination do his get going tomorrow with an old-fashioned huddle colloquium.

I will capture it all and post it somewhere where it won’t be confused with my own actual prose. I never thought of describing what I do as a means of bringing psyche to the commonplace words of the rules and the fresh judgments in Digicel, Abela and Hedrich. Why did the Phoenix Fall not think of launching their song What exceedingly matters to me at evensong? The description of Gordon Brown as the least telegenic partisan concert-master is pure genius.

I leave you with this:

The e-disclosure interplay is delicate, to communicate the least, but marketing ideas eddy for all that….There is wastefulness of elbow-room here to be inventive in decision ways to spread issue, partisan and other messages and to seize unexpected audiences.

Any of you thinking of using automated translation tools may care to get some samples before you start.

Enjoy.

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More than just ediscovery panels at CEIC 2009

I have already written (Describing the e-discovery elephant) about the two e-discovery panels which I took part in at CEIC 2009. The panels were only one of the reasons why I came here. There was another formal reason and countless informal ones.

The other formal reason was a meeting of Guidance Software’s Strategic Advisory Board which brought together a small group of people from different parts of the e-discovery field  – two General Counsel responsible for electronic discovery in large corporations, two well-known private-practice lawyers specialising in e-discovery, and two industry experts from other jurisdictions – who sat down with senior executives from different areas of the company’s activities. The traffic passes both ways at these things – the company gets input from those outside it and the invited members learn more about what the company is doing and what it plans to do.  Discussion ranges beyond the company and into the wider industry, with the combination of the occasion and the assembled company taking us down ways not envisaged in the agenda.

Describing the ediscovery elephant

It is pouring with rain here in Orlando. Every so often, a flash of lightning illuminates the large plastic elephants which stand in the pool beside me. Even the most assiduous English official, never stuck for something to put up a notice about, could not come up with a sign reading “Rocks frighten the elephants. Please do not throw rocks”.

The Loews Royal Pacific Resort at Universal is, as its name implies, a holiday destination as well as a conference centre and you have to choose your bar with care. The one we sat in as we finalised our presentations lies between the pool and the bedrooms, and a stream of near-naked beauties dripped their way past us. If that sounds distracting, it is much better than being approached by Shrek and Princess Fiona, who occupy one of the other bars. We don’t get this sort of thing at London conferences.

I am here for CEIC 2009. The Computer and Enterprise Investigations Conference is run annually by Guidance Software to bring a mixture of technical, legal and business events together for people from corporations, law enforcement and other areas with an interest in data preservation, identification and capture. There are about 800 people here, nearly as many as last year. There are not many conferences which can claim that in 2009. Here you can do anything from polishing up your EnCase certification at one extreme to listening to e-discovery seminars at the other. The East Coast location makes it easier for those from Europe, but does not, alas, guarantee the weather.

Compliance with the demands of an e-disclosure diary

I don’t think I envisaged a peaceful life when I decided to commit all my time to promoting electronic disclosure, but I am not sure either that I foresaw this much activity compressed into a short space. It is just as well that I enjoy it. My original policy never to say no to anything which will get an audience for the subject has had to be modified a bit – double-bookings are difficult, for one thing. Every event involves preparing slides and notes, not just turning up on the day, and the everyday stuff – researching and writing – goes by the board when there is always something happening or about to happen. I would not want it any other way but it would be good to have it better spaced. A summary will have to suffice for now, and the summer promises time to catch up.

Clyde & Co selects Epiq Systems and Trilantic as preferred e-disclosure providers

Although the business of the e-Disclosure Information Project involves telling law firms and corporations about electronic disclosure technology suppliers, I avoid discussions about pending competitive tenders in the e-disclosure market. Given the range of people with whom I am in contact, the chances of hearing twice about the same contract from rival bidders are too high and, metaphorically at least, I put my fingers in my ears if I fear I might learn more than I want to know.

No-one, however, could avoid knowing that Clyde & Co has been working to identify preferred suppliers of electronic disclosure services. It seems ages ago that I first heard about it, in a remote country pub (life is not all glossy conferences and airports, you know) and it became clear that Kevin Butterill, Clyde’s litigation support manager, was extremely keen to get it right. The tender became the Moby Dick of the e-disclosure seas, each provider his own Captain Ahab on a mission to hunt it down.

Something for everyone in the Jackson litigation costs report

Lord Justice Jackson’s interim report on civil litigation costs weighed in at 650 pages, not the 1,000 pages which rumour anticipated. It is as well that I am commentator not a newshound journalist, because I missed the big day and was on-air myself at a rather more nuts-and-bolts level (giving a live e-Disclosure broadcast) as Sir Rupert Jackson was being interviewed by the BBC on the more momentous subject-matter of his report.

That there was something for everyone in the report is evidenced by the range of things which others picked up on in reporting the launch. LegalWeek headed its report Jackson to review complex commercial disputes and picked up on Sir Rupert’s expressed determination to cover complex multi-party disputes as well as cases in lower courts. It quoted him as saying “I have come to the conclusion that the Commercial Court is not a sacred territory, which falls outside the terms of reference set for me by the Master of the Rolls……The recommendations in my final report must encompass all civil courts, including the Commercial Court.”

The untapped potential of YouTube as a promotional medium

You can launch political policies, bands and brands on YouTube, but perhaps not 1,000 page interim reports on litigation costs. Lord Justice Jackson will do his launch tomorrow with an old-fashioned press conference. Other things, however, bring the marketing and educational value of video to mind.

Lord Justice Jackson’s initial report on the reform of civil litigation costs is due to be launched at a press conference tomorrow, 8 May. There is an article in Times Online today by Neil Rose headed What will the Jackson report say? which summarises some of the things we might expect to see from what is rumoured to be 1,000 pages long – and that is just the interim report.

The article’s most important point comes at the end – this not a government-commissioned report. It was the Master of the Rolls, Sir Anthony Clarke, who asked Sir Rupert Jackson to undertake what was always going to be a vast and important task. The role of judges is central to any planned reforms and, one hopes, something which is immune from political pressures.

I will not be there, unfortunately. I long ago agreed to do an e-disclosure live video presentation for CLT Onlne which goes out at 1.00 tomorrow.  The bare reference in my slides to the Jackson Litigation Costs Review will be outdated by the time I get to it.

Richard Susskind webcast on the End of Lawyers?

Professor Richard Susskind caused a stir at the ABA TechShow in Chicago in April with his thoughts on the way the future looks for the legal profession. The context was the launch of his latest book, The End of Lawyers?, that comforting question mark flagging the possibility that the profession may survive in some form if it adapts.

I wrote about Susskind’s book when parts of it were trailed in the Times (see Richard Susskind and the End of Lawyers) and I will not repeat what I said there about the potential for change in the litigation support market. Nor will I attempt an overview of Susskind’s wider propositions, which are readily available elsewhere.

I have been listening to a webcast of a discussion between Richard Susskind and Mark Harding, Group General Counsel of Barclays, and focusing on a couple of points which seem to me to both imminent as opposed to speculative (although Susskind’s speculations tend to become the norm rather quickly), and relevant to the management of litigation and other areas which involve the handling of electronic documents. Litigation is the one area which (as I noted in my earlier article) has defied Susskind’s original predictions because (he told me when I asked him three years ago) the clients had not put pressure on the lawyers to adopt technology.

The MoJ and litigation reform

I am not sure what to make of yesterday’s article in the Lawyer. Chaos as MoJ scuppers litigation reform is the headline. Below that, the sub-heading shouts Judges and politicians at loggerheads as Jackson review kicked into touch. My difficulty is that nothing in the article bears out the second half of that assertion.

Judges and politicians at loggerheads? Well, yes, of course. They have very different characteristics and priorities. The senior judges are decent, honest people with a genuine and pressing wish to improve access to justice and to make litigation the affordable right of every business and individual. Not much in common with New Labour then, beyond the lip-service paid by giving an otherwise unknown politician the label “Access to Justice Minister” .

Guidance Software survey for IQPC

The Information Retention and e-Disclosure Conference run by IQPC is usually one of the best in the calendar, with a better-than-usual mix of corporate users and information professionals. It take place this year on 20 and 21 May at Le Meridien in Piccadilly. As usual, Day 1 is concerned with information management and Day 2 with litigation and regulatory matters.

I have several levels of interest in this conference. I am on its Advisory Board and have been involved in much of the planning. I am doing two judicial sessions on Day 2, of which I will say more shortly. Several of the sponsors of the e-Disclosure Information Project are taking part, including Guidance Software, FTI Technology, Epiq Systems, Autonomy and Legal Inc.

E-Disclosure in the £50,000 case

The article to which I am about to refer you is in fact called E-Discovery in the $50,000 Case by Conrad Jacoby and not as my heading shows it. We in the UK renamed the ancient process known as discovery of documents ten years ago and called it disclosure, as part of the frankly stupid idea that if you give something a trendy new name you somehow make it better. Sterling is now so debased as against the Dollar that the difference between 50,000 of the one and 50,000 of the other does not matter much in the context of which Jacoby writes.

How can you handle electronic documents cost-effectively in cases whose value is disproportionate to the work involved in strict compliance with the rules of discovery / disclosure? Many in the UK blame the advocates of litigation support technology, as if we are somehow responsible for creating all this stuff. It exists. It has to be dealt with if you are to comply with the rules. Pretending that your clients and their opponents do not have electronic documents has two outcomes – breach of professional duty, and unexpected costs down the line. Better, surely, to square up to the facts and develop a strategy to handle the documents efficiently.