Tag Archives: technology

The old order changeth

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Of all the poems I was made to learn at school, few have remained with me as much as Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur. I cannot help but be moved by the opening lines: “So all day long the noise of battle rolled, among the mountains by the winter sea”.

Lovers of legend will remember how the fatally wounded Arthur instructed his knight Sir Bedivere to take the famous sword Excalibur, throw it into the lake and come back and tell Arthur what he saw. The knight was bedazzled by the beauty of the sword and could not bring himself to do as instructed but pretended to the dying king that he had done so and had seen the waters ripple on the lake. The king knew he was lying and ordered him to go again. For a second time the knight could not do as instructed and again told the king that when he had thrown the sword into the water he had heard “the water lapping on the crag and the long ripple washing in the reeds.”

The king was furious and threatened to kill his knight unless he did as he was told and on the third occasion Sir Bedivere flung the sword with all his might out over the waters of the mere. As Excalibur fell towards the water, there “rose an arm, clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, that caught him by the hilt and brandished him three times, and drew him under in the mere.”

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Burying our heads in the clouds

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Did you see the 2004 film “Head in the Clouds“? I did not! But if you had you would know that the protagonists face unpalatable choices in 1930s Europe. In fact I had never heard of it until told about it by a lunch companion last week who raved about it. Whether it is any good or not, I do not know but a film with Charlize Theron and Penélope Cruz in it has something going for it in any event, I thought.

Apparently the film received poor reviews and has presumably sunk without trace. A pity, as I would have liked to see it now it has been drawn to my attention.

Burying your head in the sand is an evocative euphemistic expression of a failure to acknowledge or confront a problem. Ostriches are supposed to bury their heads in the sand but do not actually do so. The theoretical behaviour attributed to them derives from Pliny the Elder who wrote that ostriches are so stupid that they imagine that when their head is hidden the viewer cannot see the rest of them either! They have no need for this ridiculous attitude as they are very fast when threatened and expert at camouflage in the right terrain and have a fearsome kick which can seriously injure and even kill.

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A poke in the eye

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idea of poking someone in the eye with the end of a biro is not one which occupies my mind a lot. I have to say, however, that the prospect of damage is high. The mere thought of a sharp pointed object being forcibly thrust into a soft and delicate object like an eye not only makes me squirm but is obviously an action liable to cause extreme pain and harm.

I had not thought about this until confronted recently with the problem at the entrance to one of our revered temples of cricket (to save embarrassment I will not say which one and I have been to three of our Test Match grounds recently). Having queued briefly to gain entrance to the ground I arrived at the place where you and your bags are searched these days clutching a very small can of sparkling water which I had been given free by enthusiastic promoters working the queue. I intended to drink it when in my seat but one of the ground’s vigilant staff members told me I could not take it in as it was a possible offensive weapon and it would have to be confiscated. The alternative was to drink it there and then which, being of a cussed nature, I duly did.

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Squid & cream

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With summer coming to an end (although the recent weather over the Bank Holiday suggests this has already happened) we can look forward with keen anticipation to what the autumn and the first half of 2011 will bring.

Incidentally, why do we all still have to suffer bank holidays? Given to bank workers in the late 19th century who did not have proper holidays, they are an outmoded concept where the state allows you to have a holiday on a given Monday when the weather is “guaranteed” to be poor and everyone else is on holiday so you cannot get anything done. Note to Coalition: Abolish bank holidays (except Christmas and Easter as these are religious festivals) and allow everyone an additional number of days of statutory holidays to be taken when we want and not just because it is ghastly Wilsonian May Day or August 31st!

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Bloody Sunday

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Some time in May 1998, I returned to my office from a meeting to find on my desk a three page fax (remember those?) from the Solicitor to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry asking if Eversheds would be prepared to express an interest in taking some statements in Northern Ireland during July and August of 1998.

The publication of the Saville Report last week has set me thinking a lot about what transpired. Having indicated our interest, I and a couple of other partners, a senior support lawyer and our Head of IT set about working out how we might respond to the opportunity offered to attend a meeting with the Solicitor and the Secretary to the Inquiry and leading Counsel.

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Musings from the coalface

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This week I trained my 100th lawyer on using the CaseLogistix review platform. During the dozen or so training sessions I have conducted over the past couple of months both face to face and via the web a number of people have commented that it is unusual to see the Managing Director running training sessions. This got me thinking about the nature of the industry and the approach we adopt at Millnet.

Over the past six years I have witnessed countless sales pitches and demonstrations of litigation support software. Reflecting on these, they have been more often poor than good and have at times been truly dire. Dissecting the reasons for this it seems there are a number of common deficiencies on the part of the demonstrator – Continue reading →

Bloody Sunday and IT

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When I was in private practice, I acted for the Bloody Sunday Tribunal. The inquiry is chaired by Lord Saville of Newdigate (originally a Law Lord and now one of the Supreme Court Justices) and is likely to report next year, some 12 years after it was set up.

Much has been written about the inquiry, and doubtless considerably more is to come when the report is published in 2010, but I was interested to see that Lord Saville’s experience in the Bloody Sunday Inquiry helped to inform the design of the IT systems which have been developed for the Supreme Court.

According to a recent article by Richard Susskind  (‘How Bloody Sunday helped to future-proof the Supreme Court’s IT‘, The Times, 1st October 2009) Lord Saville chaired a committee including Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, Master of the Rolls, Jenny Rowe, Chief Executive of the Supreme Court and various legal technologists, systems specialists and ministry officials.

Susskind says “Introducing IT to the Supreme Court was made easier because a high-tech court was envisaged from the outset. The Ministry of Justice and various IT suppliers developed the systems and an IT user group oversaw the project”.

I had no involvement in the selection of the IT systems used by the Bloody Sunday Inquiry but there was a considerable amount of material to be handled and I will always be grateful to Kelvin McGregor Alcorn (then of Oyez Legal Technologies, now of Deloitte) for introducing me to the delights of electronic document management during the course of the almost 6 years I worked with the inquiry.

Happy memories!

e-Discovery coming of age

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Back in May this year, in an interview that appeared in Legal Week, I was prepared to hedge my bets as to whether a tipping point in the use of electronic discovery methods had been reached. Now I am convinced.

The e-dsicovery tipping pointThe reason is the timely conjunction of market need, technical capacity and tumbling costs.

To illustrate how far e-discovery costs have fallen, we estimate that a large e-discovery project undertaken five years ago which took upwards of six months and cost more than £500,000 would today be completed within days and cost less than £10,000.

There are four key factors at work here – cost pressure from clients; increasing maturation of e-discovery technology; a judiciary increasingly aware of e-discovery and prepared to address costs; and competitive pressure as the more innovative law firms leverage the technology for competitive advantage.

A key benefit of these technical improvements and increased speed is that the latest e-discovery technology is available to any law firm of any size on any matter, at a price that will be proportionate to the claim. We are now at the point where it should  be normal practice to use e-discovery technology in relation to even relatively low value disputes. The question for those practitioners who have been slow to embrace the new paradigm is, “How much longer can you afford not to?”

Further reading:  e-Discovery in the Spotlight

Opus Interruptus

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In his article for The Harvard Business Review Death by Information Overload Paul Hemp cites research that reveals not only how our personal wellbeing but also our productivity can be affected by the ever increasing volume of information available to us. 

Hemp claims that the sheer volume of information to be assimilated threatens our decision making and our ability to innovate, and perhaps he is right as I am commenting on what I have read rather than being innovative! 

Apparently in one study people took 25 minutes to return to work after being interrupted by an incoming email!! Fortunately, we need not take this too seriously to heart because, guess what, there is technology on hand to assist with the problem! 

By a combination of clever software which seeks to limit and prioritise the emails you receive, and taking control of your “addiction coupled with a change of culture in the workplace” you can help to cure the malady. 

Sensible and appropriate use of technology to assist in unravelling the issues in a case as early as possible makes sense for litigators faced with ever increasing amounts of data from clients and third parties. Use of the technology must always be proportionate (and that is another issue) but failure to use it in appropriate cases is likely to lead to information overload. 

Disproportionate perhaps!  Just like the reaction of an overworked associate who has just received another email interruption?

At large in Peterborough

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Visiting Peterborough last week to talk to a group of lawyers about Smart e-Discovery,  I found myself walking past the magnificent ancient cathedral in the centre of this otherwise (some would say) unexceptional modern town. With an hour to kill before the presentation, I wandered into the cathedral ..   [and those of you who don't share my fascination for this subject may skip the next two paragraphs!]

It contains the tomb of Katharine of Aragon. Katharine was the youngest surviving child of the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, who unified and created modern Spain in the 15th century. She married firstly Arthur, Prince of Wales, eldest son of King Henry VII, and when he died young she married his brother and became the first of the six wives of Henry VIII. Henry ultimately rejected her when he became infatuated with Anne Boleyn…

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