SCL article: e-Disclosure and Legal Practice in the Recovery Position

Computers and Law, the website of the Society for Computers & Law, has kindly republished an article which I wrote following LegalTech 2010.

They have merged that article with the predictions which I made for the SCL at the turn of the year and called the article Trends: e-Disclosure and Legal Practice in the Recovery Position. The fact that the original springboard was a US event did not diminish the article’s relevance to the UK or, indeed, to any other jurisdiction which requires the discovery of documents for litigation. The addition of my 2010 e-disclosure predictions emphasises the UK elements.

The SCL’s choice of words in the title are aptly chosen: the words the recovery position accurately reflects my positive view of likely developments, and the reference to legal practice makes it clear that this is not just a subject for the hands-on litigators, but also for those responsible for developing new business and managing the work when it comes in.

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NatWest online banking goes down – at least I hope it is just the online bit which has gone down

As I write, the whole of NatWest’s online banking system has been down for at least five hours. I know it is not working because I am trying to use it. I know that the problem arose at least five hours ago because the first tweet with the NatWest hash tag #NatWest is timed at five hours ago. One user observed that the only words on his otherwise empty screen were “Helpful Banking”

Of course, it is just a guess that the only casualty is the online banking system. My first assumption was that the problem was at my end and I wasted some time investigating that. Then I began to wonder if, perhaps, the whole bank had gone down. That was the question posed by one tweeter about three hours ago who asked “Have NatWest gone titsup?”.

The many tweets on the subject at least reassure me that the problem is not mine alone. The consensus seems to favour a computing failure rather than a cataclysmic banking failure.

The point, however, is this. Why is NatWest not using all available resources to reassure its customers and keep us informed? It would not be too difficult, I imagine, to put a warning on the home page through which one accesses the logon. It would be even easier if the bank itself used Twitter as a means of communicating – even NHSDirect, one of the most reviled of UK institutions, is brave enough to take part in Twitter discussions.

I observed in a recent article that making use of new media forms is not merely a matter of pushing out one’s own messages. It can be used to track comments made about you, whether positive or adverse and, as this incident shows, it could be engaged as a means of mollifying customers and keeping them informed.

There are three possibilities here. One is that the bank has in fact gone down – that seems unlikely. Another is that they hope no one will notice and that they will get through the last working day of the month (pay-day for many people) without attracting adverse publicity, if only they keep their heads down. The most likely answer is that, for all the millions they spend each year on promotion and reputational management, no one has actually applied their minds to the subject.

PS: A sharp-eyed tweeter has just found an apology for the failure buried in the “Any Questions” section of the NatWest web site. Why didn’t I think of looking there?

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You cannot really complain at a full InBox and lots of tweets

A day in London leaves me with a pile of e-mails and a heap of tweets – all signs of a lively market, and to be welcomed despite the time it will take to catch up. Add a crusading podcast, a decent lunch, and an interesting meeting and it all adds up to a useful day. But, as an aside, why do some businesses go out of their way to alienate their customers?

I blame Twitter myself. I used to be able to go out for a day and keep up, more or less, with the e-mails as they came in, so that I had only to file them on getting home. These days, that stream is supplemented by a near-constant flow of tweets, a high proportion of which carry links to interesting articles. Again, I can usually keep up with that flow as it comes by. The problem today was that my three meetings had gaps between them only just long enough to walk from one to the other. An alarmingly high number of urban road accidents are apparently caused by people dealing with their e-mails and tweets whilst walking and, interesting and important as it all was, I was not prepared to be run over in the cause. The journey home from London to Oxford appeared to take about five minutes, so I presumably slept through it and was very lucky not to end up in Hereford.

The result, now I am home – on my left a screen full of interesting tweets; on my right an Inbox full of e-mails. I am not complaining, you understand; there are plenty of businesses at the moment which warrant no tweet-flow and generate no e-mail traffic. Besides, today’s stream has included, in no particular order, the following: positive reactions to suggestions which I have floated about e-Disclosure road-shows; progress on a proposed supplement in The Times on legal efficiency; a message with “massive congratulations on the ease and value” of my blog; a link to a white paper which looked familiar before I realised that I co-wrote it with 7Safe; interest in sponsoring the Project from a big player in search; a further step forward on the Women in eDiscovery initiative which we are running; a product release by one of my sponsors; an article from Australia headed “e-Discovery and Enhanced Judicial Involvement Come of Age” which is extremely timely; a US article which uses a post of mine as the starting point for reflections on EU privacy; and some re-tweets of an article I published before I set off this morning. That is a lot to follow up, but it is all good stuff. It will have to wait until tomorrow.