LSB OK for BSB’s ABSs and LDPs under the LSA – what does it all mean?

I don’t really do cutting edge when it comes to reporting legal developments. Sometimes there is a story worth running on the day – one software supplier buys another, or an important judgment comes out. Occasionally I get a tip-off and have the story ready to publish as it happens, like the Ofsted one a few days ago. For the most part, however, I am content to let things happen, assimilate the comments of others, dig out some original sources, and try and fit it all into a context relevant to case management or e-discovery.

One development which has been on my To Do list for a while is the growing possibility that barristers might overhaul solicitors in getting on top of electronic disclosure. It has long been foreseeable that clients would begin to challenge the historic model for handling litigation documents; that model involves the solicitors requiring that the clients hand over their documents, which the solicitors then search through both for evidence relevant to the issues and for disclosure purposes.  The conventional solicitor approach to this is to throw waves of assistants at the problem, like Douglas Haig at the Somme, whilst lobbing bills at the client. That approach is dying, mown down by the twin enfilade of client resistance and the growing realisation (elegantly expressed by Lord Justice Jackson) that “proportionate” and “necessary” do not mean the same thing when you come to consider questions of costs.

Substantial e-Disclosure figures exercise for charity

Andrew Haslam of Allvision and Nigel Murray of Trilantic have one or two things in common: they are both long-time and well-known figures in the UK e-Disclosure scene, and are both figures of substance in more ways than one, usually to be found in some hostelry with evidence of their taste for good food and drink both in their hands and about their persons. In case New Labour has passed some law prohibiting such comments (it is hard to keep up), I should say at once that both of them are on record as saying the same about themselves. Both are in training for charitable causes involving uncharacteristic exercise.

On 15th May, Andrew and his wife Ann (Ann Hemming for those who know her only in her professional capacity) will be walking 40 kilometres (that is 25 miles) in memory of Jackie, partner of Kelvin McGregor-Alcorn, who died in January from a very painful spinal cancer.  In her final days Jackie was cared for by the Heart of Kent Hospice in Kent – run by MacMillan nurses – and Andrew and Ann are hoping to raise money for them.

The web site that tells you all about this is at: www.40katgoodwood.org.uk/home and you can donate on-line at www.justgiving.com/40katgoodwood

It is a little unfair to say of Nigel Murray that his exercise is uncharacteristic since this is the second year in which he has cycled hundreds of miles across France in a good cause. That cause is again Help for Heroes and the distance this year is 375 miles over six days, from Le Havre to the Second World War port of Dieppe then inland through the First World War battlefield regions of Amiens, Arras and Ypres before finishing at Dunkirk to coincide with the 70th Anniversary of the evacuation of our troops in 1940. Details of the route can be found at http://nigelmurray.blogspot.com/. You can sponsor him at at www.justgiving.com/nigel-murray.

Nigel’s training regime will presumably be as tough as last year when, to everyone’s surprise (including, I half suspect, his own) he stuck to it. I recorded that I had only ever once seen him break into a trot, and that was across a pavement and into a taxi in the rain. I heard it suggested last year, rather unfairly I thought, that more money might be raised by betting against him succeeding, but the bookies would have been the winners since Nigel did indeed finish the course.

Andrew Haslam reports that his and Ann’s training began with a gentle six mile walk into Cardiff down a “nice solid path, slightly downhill all the way” followed by rugby, alcohol, meat pies and burgers. I was suitably impressed until I realised that they had merely watched the rugby and not actually taken to the field themselves. The rest, meat pies and all, was billed as part of the training.

It is what happens on the day which counts, not the training. These are both good causes and I commend them to you.

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