Virtual LegalTech round-up

The general reaction to ALM’s Virtual LegalTech by its participants and delegates seems generally to be positive. If, as Charles Christian said on Twitter afterwards, it had a 1990s feel to it, well, that can doubtless be improved upon in future years. Christian is right also to say that opportunities were missed to make use of multimedia in the presentations, particularly as to the technology itself. Some of the ideas which I have scouted on this site for video presentations of technology solutions might easily have been slotted into the framework. This is all capable of remedy in future presentations.  ALM bit off quite enough for a first go at this.

Parallel and cross-border developments in handling electronically stored information

The second session at the Thomson Reuters Fifth Annual e-Disclosure Forum in London on 13 November was called Parallel and cross-border developments in handling electronically stored information. I was the moderator, although if Air Miles were the qualification for talking about international subjects, Browning Marean of DLA outstrips even me by a wide margin.

The panel comprised Senior Master Whitaker, Mark Surguy of Pinsent Masons in Birmingham, and Josh Ellis, Chief Information Officer at the Serious Fraud Office. I suspect that Master Whitaker has a wider range of knowledge on international case management matters than any other judge in the world; I opened by saying that, in the last six weeks, I have been in Brussels, Washington, Singapore, and in front of the UK Civil Procedure Rule Committee and the only other person present on all these occasions was Master Whitaker. In addition he is, as Senior Master, the channel through which requests under the Hague Convention are made. Mark Surguy was the only practicing commercial lawyer from the UK at LegalTech in New York this year. Josh Ellis, quite apart from his present role at the SFO, was responsible for international collections at PricewaterhouseCoopers for years and was thus able to bring a practical and hands on dimension to the discussion.

European Commission takes action against UK for data protection failings

An article in Document Management News reports on the legal action being taken by the European Commission against the UK for gaps in the legislation required to comply with EU data protection laws. The investigation leading to the action was initiated because of failure to control a specific activity – BT’s trial of PHORM, which tracks web user habits and sends targeted advertising based on what the user is apparently interested in.

The UK usually complies slavishly with EU regulations, with civil servants accused of “gold-plating” the Commission’s requirements, adding refinements and extra burdens mainly as cynical job-creation exercises to keep them and their cohorts (and their cohorts’ descendants) in work. Take the dull little men at DEFRA (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, historically a kind of dustbin for those not employable in any other government department) and give them a short EU regulation on, say, horse exports or slaughterhouses and they will (after much generously-rewarded labour), produce a law ten times as long and detailed, guaranteed to increase costs, close down businesses and put people out of work. Their own salaries and pensions, of course, are safe (if you search for “gold-plated” in Google, the results are divided between articles about British civil servants amplifying EU directives and articles about the pensions of those same civil servants).

Packed programme for Masters Conference

The 2009 Masters Conference takes place in Washington on 12 and 13 October. Its title, Global Corporate Change – Navigating Discovery, Risk and Security covers only a fraction of the subjects covered in two days.

The best part for me last year, and the main reason I went, was a keynote speech by US Magistrate Judge John Facciola which I reported at length (see Leadership in Litigation). This took the debate beyond court rules and litigation technology and up into the importance of the court as a component of society. There is a direct line between competence and the efficient use of technology (on the one hand) and access to justice (on the other). Lawyers, judges, and governments which do not to make the courts accessible to everybody are not just failing their clients, the parties appearing before them or those whom they govern. Judge Facciola has the knack of making these things sound not just worthy sentiments but objectives directly related to our daily work.

What makes this job interesting is the breadth, from the minutiae of data handling to matters of state policy. There is almost no corner of the field which is not touched on in the course of the two day conference. If I pick out just the sessions from the program on the entirely random basis that I know the speakers, that is enough to give you the flavour of it.

Information retention at e-Disclosure conference in Brussels

I demonstrated my own commitment to information retention by mislaying my notes of the sessions at IQPC’s Information Retention and E-Disclosure Management Europe Conference in Brussels last week. As with all the best document retention policies, this means that I do not have to wade through masses of information and can focus instead only on that which is important – “important” in this context meaning what I can remember. It is reasonable to assume, perhaps, that the bits I remember are those which mattered most.

Patrick Burke and Judge Peck

We kicked off with a judicial panel moderated by Patrick Burke, Senior Director and Assistant General Counsel at Guidance Software. Patrick is one of the relatively few in the US who “gets” the idea that, however sophisticated the US legal system may be in many respects, those who do business in a multinational context must take notice of jurisdictional differences. Rather too many assume that things are much the same over here if you shout and wave your arms about.

Clearing the decks before going to Brussels

I do not pretend that this job is hard work in the way that trying to reach a sales target or managing a large project is hard work. It is far too enjoyable for that. It would, however, be good if all these interesting things could be spread out more evenly across the year.

Did I really agree to deliver 10,000 words for a book chapter on digital evidence by 1 October? Did that have to coincide with finishing off two white papers? Why do all the conferences end up bunched together (three conferences in three continents in three weeks starting this week in Brussels)? Are the Twitter eDiscovery lists always so full of interesting stories to follow up, or have I joined in at a particularly interesting point?  I could write ten stories a day entirely from the leads on there alone – but for the book, white papers and the conferences, that is.

New French Data Protection Opinion on US discovery procedures

I bet that headline made your heart skip a beat with excitement, as mine did when I saw that the Proskauer Rose LLP Privacy Law blog has a new entry headed French Data Protection Authority releases new opinion on compliance with US discovery procedures. To find “new”, “data protection”, and “French” in the same country would be quite something, never mind in the same heading.

Disappointingly, there is little new in the Opinion nor (despite my initial excitement) did I really expect there to be. Proskauer Rose supplies a helpful summary and, even more usefully, a link to a translation of the Opinion

If we cannot have something new, at least it is good to have a reasonably clear statement of what the existing position is. Since neither France nor any other EU country is likely to relax its requirements (on the contrary, the general drift is in the other direction) it is as well that US courts and lawyers have the clearest possible statement of what the restrictions are and what can be done within them to meet, as far as possible, the requirements of a US court or authority. Leaving aside the detailed definitions and regulations, which you can read for yourself, the main message is that quite a lot can be achieved by, for example, anonymising data and some serious filtering.

London meeting of Women in eDiscovery

I am a supporter of Women in eDiscovery and glad to learn from Laura Kelly of Epiq Systems that the London branch is active. They have a meeting on 17 September at the offices of Fulbright & Jaworski, 85 Fleet Street, London, EC4Y 1AE.

The information war – news from the front updated

My post Cooperative hands across the sea referred to an article by Jason Baron on Ralph Losey’s e-Discovery Team blog.  Jason’s article attracted some comments, two of which are worth hiving off for comment in their own right. One concerns the “information war” and is covered here. The other is about lawyer education which I will come back to.

Dr Jochen Lardner urges the importance of having the skills to conduct searches in any area of life in an information economy. He refers to “authority/credibility, censorship, technical failure, cybercrime/disinformation/information warfare”. Regular readers will know of my strongly-held view that all of these things, with the possible exception of cybercrime, are areas where UK citizens must do battle daily with their own government, both defensively (it will record everything about you and then lose the data) and offensively (MP’s expenses, ministerial cover-ups).

It now seems likely that the Labour Government will die of weakness and internal corruption before we get to the hanging-from-lamp-posts stage of civil disturbance which seemed a real possibility earlier this year. Nevertheless, we must remain alert to the potential for government misuse (whether by carelessness, incompetence or design) of the mass of private information which is collected about us, and be able to fight fire with fire – the “disinformation/information warfare” to which Dr Lardner refers is a civil war as well as one against foreign powers.

Cooperative hands across the sea

My post about the increasing exchange of ideas between the US and UK on matters of electronic discovery (Preserving the old ways, protecting the new ways) followed a spate of references in US e-discovery commentaries to what is happening in the UK. I observed that “The UK’s apparently quaint approach to disclosure conceals some workmanlike rules which deserve better use and serious consideration by others as well as ourselves”. An English audience may be interested to see some of what is said about us in the US.

The sources referred to below are amongst those to which I pay regular visits anyway, but their common element last week was that they all linked to articles of mine (and therefore turned up on my visitor statistics list). The point of the observation is not so much pride in the quality of my audience as evidence that what happens in the UK is now of interest in the US, which you would not have found a year or so ago.

Sedona Conference dialogue on cross-border discovery in Barcelona

As I have noted elsewhere, I had my own cross-border problems in getting to the Sedona Conference International Programme on Cross-Border eDiscovery, eDisclosure and Data Privacy Conflicts in Barcelona on 10-11 June. I was chairing an edisclosure conference in London the previous day and due in Sydney at the week-end and, in consequence, arrived late in Barcelona and left as soon as the main business ended.

I am spared my usual faithful accounts of the sessions by Sedona’s sensible rule that “what happens at Sedona stays at Sedona”. My mission generally is to get as wide an audience as possible for what is said at conferences, but I am more than happy to submit to the restriction in this context, partly because there is more than enough else to write up and partly because the density of the dialogue (and Sedona is expressly committed to dialogue rather than debate) is such that you would need a book to do justice to its proceedings.

It seems sensible instead to juxtapose some stereotypes against the reality in an attempt to show those new to the subject what the broad picture is. This matters because cross-border issues inevitably involve cross-cultural matters as well as conflicts of laws. The best and most topical summary of the issues is Working Document 1/2009 on pre-trial discovery for cross border civil litigation prepared by a Working Party set up under Article 29 of EU Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data. Its introduction recites the problem thus:

Parallel and cross-border developments in eDiscovery

I have just had to turn down the opportunity to speak at a conference organised by LexisNexis in Hong Kong on 20 and 21 July. The invitation was to deliver the keynote speech at the start of the first day with the heading  Globalisation and Digitisation: the Rising Need for Digital Forensics and E-Discovery in Today’s World, which I would have been extremely happy to do.

My Mother’s 80th birthday party is on the previous day and my eldest son’s graduation ceremony is in Leeds on the day following. I could, with a fair wind, have made it to Leeds with two hours to spare by racing at dawn from Heathrow to Gatwick. I have done worse things – my breakfast-in-Sydney-dinner-in-Washington trip last October didn’t allow even time for an espresso between terminals at LA and, as I recounted last week, I made it from Orlando to IQPC in London just as the conference opened. I am game for that sort of thing, but not for missing my Mother’s birthday.

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.

US – Swiss Safe Harbor

It had escaped my notice that the US Department of Commerce and the Federal Data Protection and Information Commission of Switzerland had established a US – Swiss Safe Harbor Framework. The provisions and procedures are identical to those which apply to data transfers between the EU and the US.

Switzerland understood the commercial, as well as the personal, value of privacy whilst those countries which now make up the European Union were still in that state of near-permanent war which governed their relations for centuries. That war has now been converted into the back-stabbings, media briefings and backstairs jockeying for power which go on in Brussels and Strasbourg, from which Switzerland has stayed aloof.

People outside the EU tend to view it as a single bloc corresponding with its political and geographical boundaries. Whilst that is largely true in global trading terms, the neat picture is muddled by specific national distinctions – each EU country has its own privacy and data protection laws, for example – and is entirely misleading in cultural terms. The picture is confused still further by the fact that Switzerland, sitting bang in the middle of the EU landmass, is not a member of the EU.

Keeping informed on information about informaton

It is getting hard to keep up. The various aspects of information and justice which I write about are developing faster than I can put quill to keyboard.

I wrote my piece An information war at the week-end and updated it when the video emerged of the policeman beating up a woman at the G20 demonstration before posting it today. This morning’s Times carries a piece to the same effect as my article’s comments about protesters turning the tables on Big Brother state, using information as their weapon. There is also an article in the Times today about policemen invoking the Terrorism Act against a man who photographed them in a park (they have been given some re-education on the subject), one about the Damian Green raid (an over-reaction, apparently, according to the Parliamentary Report of yesterday – you don’t say?), and one about the further fall-out from the Damian McBride affair, with questions being asked about searching e-mails to trace the other recipients of the offending messages. Meanwhile, the European Commission has started legal proceedings against the UK for breach of its obligations to enforce EU data privacy laws.

Pretty well every topic I wrote about has therefore been updated by events. Meanwhile, I have seen a headline about Switzerland signing up to safe harbor, a judge has written in the Times today (as I have here) about the Woolf reforms, and there is a Legal IT conference coming up in Montreal which deserves a write-up. Oh, and there is some work to do as well as all this writing.

Some, at least, of all this will warrant further comment. Mr Justice Jackson, as he then was, referred to the issues in the Wembley Stadium case as being like the Lernean Hydra. That, as I am sure you all know, was a hideous creature which would emerge from its murky swamps and terrorise the people. Every time Hercules struck off a head, two more would grow in its place, so the Hydra was a bit like our civil service (and the murky swamps increasingly a metaphor for Downing Street, come to think of it). As I look at all these multiplying stories around the world which warrant reporting, the Hydra analogy comes to mind. I will try to keep up.

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An information war – making connections between privacy, liberty, policing, law and government

An American e-discovery site put up a link last week to a video showing police brutality. It is not just me, then, who sees connections between apparently diverse aspects of justice. Privacy and the right to go about your business are fast being eroded in Britain. There is a civil war looming, and information will be its weapons. Lawyers and judges will be in the middle of the battlefield.

Gabe’s Guide to the e-discovery universe, an American site dedicated, as this one is, to developments in electronic discovery, put up a link a few days ago to a YouTube video showing a fight at a football stadium in an unidentified country. A man runs across the pitch waving a banner; a squad of policemen bring him down, and one is seen repeatedly punching the already captive protester. The spectators flood the pitch and attack the police, who retreat. The compact between rulers and ruled, which (given their respective numbers) depends on public acceptance of the right of the rulers to impose law and order, has broken down.

We are heading in that direction in Britain. Policemen behave like that because ministers encourage them to think that they and the government which they represent are above the law. A few days ago, a British policeman brutally assaulted a middle-aged man as he walked home from work. The man died a few minutes later. At a memorial protest about that death, another policeman, his identification number deliberately obscured, struck a small woman across the face with a heavily-gloved hand and then thoughtfully and deliberately hit her legs with a telescopic baton. The government and decent policemen (the majority) are as appalled as the rest of us, but it is the government which has created the climate in which a policeman thinks this is the right way to behave. Several elements, tenuously linked to each other, bring us to this.

Distinguishing workplace spying from data collection

It is usually possible to reconcile employees’ legitimate privacy concerns and a company’s equally legitimate rights and obligations to collect data if you go about it properly. A story in Der Spiegel shows what happens when you get it wrong. The story does at least give an opportunity to explain the difference between spy software and data collection.

As its name implies, the e-Disclosure Information Project, which I run, exists to spread knowledge and understanding about the collection and use of electronic documents. My primary focus is on the common law countries (mainly the UK and US) which require discovery of documents in litigation, but the increase in the powers of regulators brings the same issues to countries which do not have that litigation obligation. The area where mainland EU principles collide with US discovery is in relation to privacy and data protection matters. I come across these subjects mainly in the context of trying to explain to Americans what the concepts mean, why they matter rather more to Europeans than to them, and how proper regard to privacy is not necessarily incompatible with an adequate collection of data if they take the trouble to understand both the legislation and the underlying concerns which drive the legislation.

How safe is safe harbor?

I spoke on safe harbor on a panel at LegalTech sponsored and led by LDSI. Does it give as much protection as its proponents aver? Why is Europe so concerned about data privacy anyway?

It is a beguiling expression, safe harbor. You picture small boats rocking gently in the sunlight behind a stout sea wall whilst the storms rage beyond. Your precious cargo of data shipped from Spain or Italy is protected from the threatening clouds marked “SEC” and “IRS” and can be processed and reviewed in peace by your trusty crew. European data controllers can sleep peacefully at night confident that they are protected from marauding information commissioners and angry data subjects.

Such is the appeal of the expression “safe harbor” that America started using it simultaneously for more than one completely different concept. One is the registration mechanism thrashed out between the European Commission and the US Department of Commerce in 2000 to mitigate the commercial impact for US companies of the EU Directive 95/46/EU of 1995 on the Processing of Personal Data. Another protects ISPs from copyright infringements by their users. The expression also occurs in Evidence Rule 510 to do with waiver of privilege. This article relates to data privacy.

OutIndex releases E-Discovery engine

OutIndex, the electronic discovery software company has added another string to its bow with the release of three Microsoft .NET components to allow others to build their own e-discovery applications.

Between them, the three components provide the tools for extracting metadata, searching data and printing electronic documents and e-mail messages to .TIFF or .PDF. These are the same primary components as those which OutIndex uses in its main processing system. OutIndex’s increasingly informative web site includes a page on its E-Discovery Engine as well as the rest of its widely-scaled product range, from its flagship application OutIndex E-Discovery down to its desk-top application eDiscoveryXpress for in-house processing.

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.

Practical Guidelines for e-Disclosure Management

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.

Foreign collections need more than big feet

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.

Whose discovery rules would you rather break?

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.

Limitations on document retention

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).

H5 gets safe harbor certification

H5, the high-end provider of automated document analysis and information risk management services for the legal industry, has obtained safe harbor certification from the US Federal Trade Commission.

Most US companies whose business involves handling EU-derived data now have such certification, and it is safe to assume that if a company of H5’s standing has not got it it already, it is because they have chosen not to rush. Whether this implies a new interest in EU markets is hard to say. I hope so, because the H5 approach is one worth considering for lawyers and corporates with very large data collections who just want the result at a known cost rather than the burden of getting there themselves.

Howrey sets up in India

Howrey, the US and global law firm known as much for its trial and litigation support services as for its legal practice, has opened an office in Pune, India, to handle its document management and similar functions. This, as the LAW.COM article about it suggests, combines the benefits of a well-educated but relatively low-paid work-force with the quality control which comes from running the show yourself.

Taking in such outsourced work has contributed much to India’s economy recently, and it is attractive in theory to consider delegating the labour-intensive work involved in litigation coding. Many US law firms are doing just that, but UK firms have been slower to go down this route. One reason is exactly the concerns over quality control which Howrey aims to beat with its own facility; another is the EU data protection and privacy rules. There is certainly some work going from the UK – and some predict an increase in the next year – but not as much as India would like.

Trilantic sets out EU Data Protection Rules

The EU Data Protection Rules – Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council – On the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data to give its snappy full name – are the usual bureaucrats’ quagmire, giving the impression that their primary purpose is to provide job opportunities for Belgian civil servants.

Whatever we may think of them, we cannot avoid them, and those who work in this area must tread carefully. A thank-you, therefore, to Trilantic, who have summarised them all, with links to each country from a clickable map, and to the text of the relevant Articles. They prudently accompany it with a Disclaimer.

The guide can be found here.

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Marcus Evans conference – E-Discovery Strategies

A good e-Disclosure conference will make you want to know more or, at least, will ring an alarm bell in due course. There are pitfalls to know about and practice development opportunities being missed.

I am just back from a conference in London organised by Marcus Evans with the title E-Discovery and Document Management Strategies. The fact that I was one of the speakers does not disqualify me from saying that it was one of the best I have been to.

I will write separately about the session which I shared with His Honour Judge Simon Brown QC and which was, as you might guess, about the scope which the CPR gives to willing parties and an active judge to bring down the time and costs of e-disclosure.

Nor will I here try and summarise what each speaker said – it would be invidious to pick out any of them in what was a well-balanced programme, Actually, I will make one exception and pick out Browning Marean of DLA Piper US LLP, who displayed his usual knack of giving a near-universal viewpoint which transcends national boundaries and applies equally to large and small cases. It comes down to knowing your stuff and anticipating costs.

T3 – Trial Tactics and Technology in London

A mock eDiscovery hearing yesterday in front of real judges would have put UK litigation lawyers on notice of rough rides ahead if they are less than fully prepared to justify what has been done or not done to control the time and expense of Discovery. Where was the audience?

I have never been to a legal technology conference where they have to hold the crowds back with ropes. That, however, was the scene which greeted me as I approached the New Connaught Rooms in London yesterday for ALM Events’ show T3 Trial Tactics & Technology.

It turned out to be a double-booking – all those podgy girls in black tights and the skinny youths clutching musical instruments were there for the first auditions of Britain’s Got Talent. Perhaps Simon Cowell or Ant and Dec would pop up and give their view on the talent on the next floor, where ALM had gathered a large crowd of experts from both sides of the Atlantic under the title Confronting litigation and globalization of your data.

The Part 31 CPR obligation to discuss ESI

What were almost side-issues in Malletier v Dooney & Bourke, Inc are worth noting when considering the UK Part 31 CPR obligation to discuss ESI issues

I have a double interest at the moment in the scope of the English court rules about the obligation to “discuss any issues that may arise regarding searches for and the preservation of electronic documents” which arises in the Practice Direction to Part 31 CPR.

Jason Velasco joins Merrill

Jason Velasco was one of the speakers at the OutIndex Summit which I wrote about a few days ago, managing to cover EU Privacy and the pros and cons of in-house data processing in one short and stimulating talk.

Jason has now become Vice-President of Client Services at Merrill Corporation, responsible for managing Merrill’s consulting organisation, project managers, and data collection/forensics group.

He was previously VP at Renew Data and before that a data recovery specialist at what is now Kroll OnTrack.

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Daylight Forensic gets Safe Harbor Certification

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s post about FTI Consulting, comes news that Daylight Forensic and Advisory has also obtained Safe Harbor Certification from the US Department of Commerce. Either there has been a spate of new certifications or coincidence brings two at once whom I know.

Daylight, a leading international regulatory consulting and forensic accounting company, opened an office and an electronic discovery lab in London in May 2007. The lab and its data handling and processing procedures were designed to comply fully with the European Commission’s Directive on Data Protection and to ensure the highest level of physical and IT security.

FTI Consulting meets EU Safe Harbor Standard

FTI Consulting is a global company advising businesses on investigations, litigation, mergers and acquisitions, regulatory issues and the like. They are perhaps best known in the UK litigation market as suppliers of Ringtail Legal, the well-established litigation document management platform.

They do much more than that, however, including volume document processing. FTI have today announced that they have met the adequacy standard for compliance with the Safe Harbor framework which governs the handling of European Union personal data.