Category Archives: Trends & observations

Tips and tweets and wikileaks

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In two recent blog posts at the tail end of last year Vox Stellarum and Waking the Dead and in case notes in our resources section I highlighted the US case of McMillen v Hummingbird Speedway Inc.

To refresh your memory the case decided that log ins and passwords to social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace were discoverable in appropriate circumstances and the claimant in that case was ordered to disclose the information to the defendants within 14 days and had to undertake not to alter or delete material on the site(s) for a defined period.

The world of litigation and e-disclosure has not taken long to follow this up at least in the United States. I see from recent press reports that the US Government is suing the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and as part of its case has applied for an order that he and others disclose their Twitter passwords and log ins. I do not know the result of the application but I suspect it may well be successful.

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Should auld aquaintance..

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Writing this with the warm glow of the safely retained Ashes firmly in mind, my thoughts turn to the King James Bible whose 400th anniversary falls in 2011.

Sometimes known as the Authorised Version, the King James Bible is an English translation of the Bible started at the instigation of King James VI of Scotland and 1st of England in 1604 and completed in 1611. It was not the first translation from the Latin (Wycliffe and Tyndale preceded this version) but it is the version which has come down to us today and which provides many of the great verses and phrases which are familiar to all whether religious or not.

In other words it has survived the test of time. I suspect that this is largely because James wanted the text to resemble language which was in common use and which was familiar to the population at large. IP lawyers will be interested to know that unlike most other works which have long since passed from copyright into the public domain, copyright in the Authorised Version remains vested in the Crown in perpetuity and the right to production of the text has to be granted under letters patent to this day.

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Hope springs internal

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Millnet’s recent launch of its Smart Insourcing project comes as a morsel of good news amidst the general doom and gloom concerning employment prospects for new law graduates. We asked interns Carolyn Morgan, Chelsea Parkin and Natalia van der Velde for their first hand assessment.

We have heard it said that Legal Practice Course (LPC) students and graduates who have not yet managed to secure a training contract have only themselves to blame; they have been lazy and quite simply not made the effort to find one! We have also heard of individuals making 200 plus applications before successfully finding that elusive training contract. Is it the quality of the individual, lack of training contracts available, or fiercer competition faced by this year’s graduates that has made the process of finding a training contract that much harder in 2010?

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Snowman theft armless say police

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One of the best loved stories of recent years is Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman with its music by Howard Blake. In case you are not familiar with the story (and surely everyone has heard the main theme tune Walking in the Air) it concerns a little boy who makes a snowman one day. Unable to sleep he decides to check on the snowman in the night and finds it has come to life. They have a number of adventures together before returning to the garden of the house where the boy lives.

We have all had to get used to a snowy theme in the past week or so. Tales abound of difficulties encountered by this person and that but I wonder if you heard the story of the woman who dialled 999 and explained to the switchboard operator that her snowman had gone missing?

“I went out to have a fag,” she said, “and he’s gone.”

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Is there life after outsourcing?

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We’ve heard it said (and we’ve said it ourselves often enough) that the next big thing after outsourcing is going to be… insourcing. It will probably also come as no surprise that our version of it is called smart insourcing.

What is smart insourcing? Simply put, smart insourcing allows law firms to draw upon a pool of local paralegal talent as if it were an extension of their own in-house paralegal team.

Document review, in particular, is one of those requirements that tends to come up at short notice and with a degree of urgency that can place a serious strain on a law firm’s own resources. Millnet Smart Insourcing allows law firms to augment their in-house capability, using local resources, at times of the greatest need.

Why have we done it?

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Vox stellarum

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The party season is upon us already. Having concluded a week of festivities celebrating my birthday recently and fresh, if that is the right word in the circumstances, from the Millnet 15th birthday party at the top of the Millbank Tower with fireworks courtesy of the Mayor of London (thanks Boris!), my thoughts are increasingly turning to Christmas.

I can well imagine that many of you will groan at the thought of Christmas when it is only early November and I must admit that I agree with you whole heartedly. When I worked in Spain in the 1990s public displays of Christmas decorations and trees were reserved for the two and a half weeks leading up to Christmas Day itself following the double public holiday celebrating Constitution Day and the Feast of the Immaculate Conception at the beginning of December. There was no question of Christmas trees displayed in public places in September (I really did see one in a hotel reception in September a few years ago!) nor carols wailing out from tinny sounding speakers at all the weary shoppers in the malls.

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Seventh heaven on cloud nine

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What have the following in common?

  • A 1987 album track by George Harrison
  • A song by Bryan Adams
  • A 1969 album by the Temptations
  • Battlestar Galactica
  • A mobile phone company based in the Isle of Man
  • A crime novel by James M Cain
  • A skyscraper and shopping mall in Shanghai

The answer is that all of them use the concept of Cloud Nine in their name or title! Where does this expression come from?  The International Cloud Atlas produced in 1896 defined ten types of cloud. The ninth cloud was the cumulo-nimbus rising to a height of over 10 kilometres which is as high as a cloud can be. Others have suggested the origin lies in sources as diverse as Dante’s Divine Comedy or Buddhist and Christian folklore whereas the American Dictionary of Slang published in 1969 suggests that the term cloud seven was in use rather before the now generally accepted cloud nine was defined as a state of blissful happiness.

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A duck’s a duck

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Lawyers are used to logical thinking and reasoning. After all, most of them will know the duck test: if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Conclusions are reached by a process of inductive reasoning. Don’t go away! I promise this piece will lighten up shortly and there is a nugget at the end if that is not mixing too many metaphors! Please read on!

I wonder how many people know what the following are: WeeWorld, Taringa! Habbo, Elftown, Qzone, RenRen, Plurk, Bandoo or Viadeo. To hazard a guess, not too many!

But if I asked about LinkedIn, MySpace, Bebo or Facebook, most people would know that they are social networking sites. LinkedIn has over 75 million registered users, Bebo 117m+, MySpace in excess of 130m and Facebook a whopping 500 million and counting.

By contrast the others are relatively small apart from the sites popular in China where RenRen has 15 million registered users and Qzone a highly respectable 200 million plus! [Source: Wikipedia, List of Social Networking Websites]

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Squaring the circle

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Former Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, once quipped that a week was a long time in politics. After a string of events which were calculated to make a lesser man blanch, Wilson was phlegmatic. He had spent most of his life climbing the greasy pole which is politics and he obviously felt that he needed to present an unconcerned mien to the public whatever the difficulties he or his Government faced at the time. His predecessor but one, Harold Macmillan was less phlegmatic and more laconic. When asked what was the greatest challenge facing a statesman, he replied: “Events, dear boy, events.”

Consider, however, how much more frightening than a mere week must have been the predicament of “Los 33” at the start of their ordeal. In the end they were all safely rescued after 69 days but 10 weeks must have seemed like an eternity to them at the outset and the original prediction that they would not be rescued until Christmas must have caused an agony of despair unknown to a politician.

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We are all believers now

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An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is a concept with which most people are familiar, even if they do not know its origin.

The concept appears in the Old Testament, the Koran and the Talmud and probably elsewhere as well. It is even referred to by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: 

38. You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

Matthew 5:38. 

Today’s litigation is not so much about eye gouging and/or tooth extraction as about cooperation and proportionality, while reserving the right to be as beastly to your opponent as possible if the rules permit and you are prepared to risk having to delve into what must be a deep pocket. 

I have heard it said that “proportionality is what differentiates restitution and retribution from revenge by proxy” but many people will be familiar with the use of the concept in relation to limiting the powers of the various European institutions. The idea is to limit the actions of the Commission or other agency of the European project to what is necessary to achieve any given object so that the extent of the action contemplated is in keeping with the stated aims.

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