CONSULTING
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DIGITAL FORENSICS
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E-DISCLOSURE
LEGAL NEWS Issue 9
www.cclgroupltd.com
PARALEGALS, PREDICTIVE CODING AND PROPORTIONALITY PRESSURES by Umar Yasin
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> Paraleg als, predic tive coding an d proportio nality pressures > Though ts for the m onth > Life ou tside the M 2 5 > Comple ting the E DQ – Part 2 > The Re al CSI > About CCL > CPD co urse
Offshoring, nearshoring and onshoring. Legal process outsourcing (LPO) currently comes in many forms, and it is no longer the preserve of the larger City firms, nor is it confined to outsourcing disaggregated transactional-type work, such as M&A due diligence or contract review. As can be seen from the nascent trend towards nearshoring or onshoring, engaging with an LPO provider is also no longer a choice between sending work to paralegals based in South Africa, India or the Philippines. In fact, it seems that the current conundrum for some law firms is whether to use a lower-cost paralegal centre in UK locations such as Belfast, Glasgow or Manchester or in nearshore locations such as the Isle of Man or Poland. Offshoring is what usually crops up in the mind of most lawyers when thinking about LPO; sending disaggregated and commoditised legal work offshore to e.g. India or the Philippines, in order to save costs. Onshoring is a similar initiative to cut costs, whereby law firms open up a low-cost paralegal centre elsewhere in the UK, such as Herbert Smith in Belfast, Mills and Reeve in Norwich or Addleshaw Goddard in Manchester. Nearshoring is looking slightly further afield than your own immediate borders,
but still within the confines and comfort of the EU perhaps. We at CCL are acutely aware of the general downward cost pressures that lawyers are facing, and have seen closely the increased interest amongst litigators in exploring the use of LPO for disclosure exercises. Generally, law firms and in-house legal teams have long been aware of the need to have a cost-effective method of dealing with routine transactional work. Specifically for commercial litigators, the new era of proportionality and/or costs budgeting that has been ushered in by the Jackson Reforms means that litigators are also actively looking for ways to control costs. This surge in interest for LPO alternatives to the usual way of reviewing documents during litigation is to be expected, particularly as the LPO route has become a well-trodden path in transactional legal areas. The overwhelming proportion of costs during the vast majority of disclosure exercises has always been in the document review phase, whether during electronic disclosure exercises or purely paper disclosure exercises. So it is not surprising that many litigators are looking at alternatives to traditional review, such as using an LPO provider for managed review.
With the emphasis now firmly on proportionality, in a particularly document-heavy dispute, what do you do if there are tens of thousands of documents that need to be reviewed, whether for relevance or privilege, and the cost of just the review process by paralegals or junior lawyers is £1.2 million but the entire quantum is no more than £10 million? How proportionate would that be? Or, if your case is caught under the costs-capping regime, how can you persuade the court that your figure in Form H is proportionate, where just to review, mark for privilege, redact, produce and exchange documents is estimated at £80,000 but the claim itself is worth no more than £925,000? There are infinite variations on the above scenarios and this is a situation that more and more litigators are finding themselves in, with the pressure to control costs coming from courts and clients alike. In some of these situations outsourcing the document review process to an LPO with a team of properly-qualified and suitablyexperienced paralegals could prove to be a cost-effective solution. Continued on page 6…
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