A cunning plan

I very much doubt that Ben Elton would find the contents of last week’s meeting of the Commercial Litigation Forum to be suitable material for an episode of Blackadder!

My brief report on the subjects raised was in my post last week entitled “Litigating in the 21st Century“. Many of you will be familiar with the themes of the final series of Blackadder with Edmund and Baldrick in the trenches with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry’s Melchett and the wonderful “Darling” back at base. The frivolity and sheer fun is overshadowed throughout by the grim awareness of what is going to happen and a realisation that, for all their silliness, the men in the trenches are about to go over the top.

Continue reading

Readiness is next to godliness

Many readers (and we have had a dramatic increase since the start of the year) will recall that my modest hope for 2010 was that there would be more strategic thought during the litigation process than is often apparent when we are called in to assist.

Frankly, not a lot of strategic thought can be undertaken when the disclosure deadline is only days away and there is a terabyte of data to review and the other side has just produced more material than you thought possible or likely.

Of course, if you have plenty of time you can mull over strategy to your heart’s content but most litigation cases do not allow the participants that luxury!

So, how can you make time?

Continue reading