There is an old saying which suggests that you should be careful what you wish for!
I was asked recently to come up with five top tips to keep down the cost of e-disclosure for an article in SA Law’s Stay Alert! newsletter. As a former litigation partner at Eversheds, I have seen my fair share of heavy cases. Now I see matters from a different perspective and try and bring my former experience of litigation to bear on cases where I am asked to help law firms and their clients cope with e-disclosure. Our guidebook to all this is the new Practice Direction 31B, which came into effect on October 1st 2010 and which broadly applies to multi-track litigation commenced after that date.
There are a number of things I might wish for if I were to be able to choose the starting point of advising a client how to approach a piece of litigation where e-disclosure is likely to be an issue. In fact it is almost inconceivable today that a case will arise where there are no electronic documents and, even if that were true, it is inadvisable not to give due consideration at the outset to how you might manage electronic documents in a given case. Managed properly, e-document management can be a cost effective, quick and reliable way of seeing what your strengths and weaknesses are and ensuring you are one step ahead of the opposition.
So what would be my top tips for businesses faced with litigation in 2011?
Rather than repeat them here, you can find out what they are by reading the SA Law article directly: