Collas Crill has advised Green & Smart Holdings plc on its listing on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM market.
Green & Smart Holdings plc is the Jersey holding company of the Green & Smart company group, which is engaged in the Malaysian Renewable Energy Sector.
By participating in the production of electricity through Biogas Power Plants which convert the waste produced by Palm Oil Mills, G&S is seeking to take advantage of Malaysian governmental policy towards increasing the production of electricity through renewable energy sources.
Over the last thirty years, G&S has undertaken and completed numerous projects in Asia, including the construction and delivery of four Biogas capture facilities for Felda Palm Industries Sdn Bhd. This is a subsidiary of Felda Global Ventures, which is the world’s largest crude Palm Oil producer, and the world’s largest palm oil plantation operator based on planted hectares.
The Collas Crill team comprised of group partner, Leon Santos, and associate, Simon Heggs.
Collas Crill group partner Leon Santos said: “We are delighted to have been involved in this transaction and it demonstrates our expertise in capital markets deals from SE Asia. G&S’ strong fundamentals highlights the quality of businesses from Asia that are now listing in London. The London Stock Exchange continues to offer a competitive market with attractive valuations. Jersey is also well recognised as a domicile for cross border transactions such as this.”
Collas Crill have close links with participants in the equity capital markets space in SE Asia, particularly Malaysia. This global presence provides responsive and clear advice to support transactions across all time zones.
Christodoulos G. Vassiliades & Co LLChasannounced that International Advisory Experts, a global alliance of well-established and experienced legal, financial and consulting firms that are committed to providing clients with specialist solutions for their international business requirements, has selected Christodoulos G. Vassiliades & Co LLC for IAE M&A (Cyprus) award for 2016.
International Advisory Expertsannual awards pay tribute to firms who have been successful over the past 12 months and have received exceptional praise from their peers. All nominees are researched by IAE research team and group members and potential winner shortlists are created for each jurisdiction and practice area. All nominees are then analysed by an independent panel and winners are chosen and informed.
The IAE group currently has experts from over 140 jurisdictions and these firms are cutting-edge-go-ahead practices that are committed to offering first class advice, with the joint potential to find the right solution for any specific problem and so resolve any legal, financial and tax issues which may arise.
Christodoulos G Vassiliades & Co LLC owes its success to its highly experienced and qualified lawyers, broad network of international contacts and representative offices, which enables it to provide clients with the services they desire, promptly and effectively.
Thirteen Gowling WLG professionals from Canada, Russia and the United Arab Emirates have been recognised among the top trademark lawyers in the world in the 2016 edition of Expert Guides: Trademarks.
Published annually by the Legal Media Group, Expert Guide directories highlight the world’s leading lawyers in specific practice areas. Nominations are made by legal practitioners operating in more than 90 jurisdictions, and results are tallied based on a comprehensive peer review process involving feedback from senior legal professionals and in-house counsel.
The following Gowling WLG professionals have been recognized in Expert Guides: Trademarks:
Canada
Paul Blanchard
James H. Buchan
Monique M. Couture
Kelly A. Gill
Scott R. Jolliffe
Robert A. MacDonald
Jennifer Morton
Frank Mulock
Russia
Alexander Christophoroff
Marina I. Drel
Anastassia Sinitsyna
Julianna Tabastajewa
Clio, a cloud-based legal practice management provider, and Alt Legal, a software supplier for intellectual property (IP) professionals, has announced the expansion of their partnership, now allowing European Clio users to process IP filings quickly and efficiently.
The company says that Alt Legal is the fastest and most convenient way to prepare, file, and manage intellectual property. Developed by lawyers and paralegals, the software is trusted by global law firms, boutique firms, and corporate legal departments to handle thousands of filings daily. Alt Legal automatically dockets IP filings, collects client details, and generates new filings.
“This expanded Alt Legal integration fits perfectly with our continued efforts to increase the amount of time our users have available to practice law,” said Derek Fitzpatrick, Clio’s General Manager for EMEA. “By automating some of the time-consuming core aspects of their practices, such as creating calendar entries, new matters, and billing entries, professionals can focus more time of the technical practice of IP law, and growing their firm.”
Nehal Madhani, CEO and Founder of Alt Legal, added “We’re thrilled to announce the expansion of our partnership and integration with Clio to support its customers in the UK and continental Europe. Clio customers in UK and Europe can now use Alt Legal to instantly collect client IP information, automatically docket IP filings and calendar key dates, and generate invoices for clients with just a few clicks.
“The Clio/Alt Legal integration is important to furthering our mission of simplifying the preparation, docketing, and analysis of intellectual property filings for IP professionals.”
The Walker Morris Food and Drink Team were joint sponsors at the Food and Drink Federation annual dinner last night which called on businesses in the industry to unite in the face of shared challenges and trumpet successes.
At the FDF Food and Drink Industry Dinner at the Hilton Park Lane, London, over 500 guests from industry, government and the media heard rallying speeches from FDF President Dame Fiona Kendrick CBE and FDF Director General Ian Wright CBE. Environment Secretary Liz Truss welcomed guests to the event and columnist and Associate Editor of The Times, Daniel Finkelstein gave the keynote address.
Event sponsors included Walker Morris, Nestlé, NFU Mutual and Food Matters Live.
Conyers Dill & Pearman has provided Cayman law advice to Baihe Network Co Ltd on the privatisation of Jiayuan.com International Ltd., which operates the largest online dating platform in China, by way of a ‘going-private’ merger.
Partner and co-chair David Lamb, partner Flora Wong and associate Angie Chu of Conyers’ Hong Kong office advised on the matter working alongside Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and De Heng Law Offices.
Ince & Co is opening a second German office in Cologne with the hire of two partners and two associates.
CMS partner Stefan Segger and Bach Langheid Dallmayr partner Eva-Maria Goergen will join Ince in due course. The duo specialise in non-marine insurance and reinsurance.
Segger, a former head of CMS’s insurance group in Germany, is bringing CMS associates Barbara Lorscheid and Marie Holzhauer with him to Ince.
Ince senior partner Jan Heuvels said the team fitted “perfectly” within Ince from a cultural standpoint and that the Cologne launch was consistent with the firm’s strategy of growing its business in core sectors and geographies.
The Cologne opening follows the recent launch of Ince Consultancy, headquartered in Hamburg, which will provide a range of non-legal services to clients in the shipping, energy, insurance, aviation, trade and real estate industries.
Ince is the second firm to announce a Cologne launch in the last six months. DWF opened in Germany in December through a local merger, with Cologne one of its three German offices.
Late last year Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer decided to merge its Cologne and Düsseldorf offices, with lawyers in Cologne moving to Düsseldorf.
Ince has seen a number of high profile exits over the last year amid two redundancy consultations for lawyers and business services staff. Earlier this month it emerged Ince Greece boss and shipping partner Nick Shepherd had exited for Wikborg Rein.
Following the UK’s Anti-Corruption Global Summit hosted by the Prime Minister David Cameron on 12 May 2016, Michael Bowes QC and Robert Barrington, Executive Director of Transparency International UK, spoke at joint Transparency International and Outer Temple Chambers’ Summit-related breakfast briefing.
The event was held on 16 May, at Outer Temple Chambers, with senior representatives of selected organisations both attending and contributing to discussions with valuable ideas and suggestions.
During the talks, Michael and Robert emphasised that the hard work begins now for both global governments and corporates alike.
In his role as leading advocate within the industry, Michael was heavily involved in the pre-Summit conference. Find out more about it by following this link.
Visit Michael’s website page to read more about his activity on anti-corruption.
Micky Barnea will deliver a lecture to entrepreneurs tonight at TRI/O (Tech Entrepreneurship Hub) at Kfar Quasim, on investment agreements.
TRI/O is a collaboration of three entities: Tsofen, an Arab-Jewish organisation promoting the integration of Israel’s Arab citizens into the hi-tech industry, MIT Enterprise Forum and MEPI – Middle East Partnership Initiative, a USA fund that offers assistance, training, and support to groups and individuals striving to create positive change in Israeli society.
Travers Smith has promoted six lawyers to its partnership in a continuation of its larger-than-usual promotions rounds.
The firm made up seven partners last year in its largest round in three years. The firm promoted just two associates in 2014 and three in 2013.
This year’s new partners work across five practice areas: commercial, competition, finance, real estate and tax.
Two of the new partners are women: Louisa Chambers, who specialises in IP, technology and data protection, and Elena Rowlands, who advises on tax law.
Travers senior partner Chris Hale said: “I am very pleased that again this year we have elected as partners six outstanding lawyers, all of whom either trained with Travers Smith or spent their formative years as associates with the firm.”
He added the promotions demonstrate the firm’s commitment to “long-term growth”.
Of the six, just two did not train at Travers. Competition lawyer Stephen Whitfield trained at legacy Hammonds and real estate lawyer Paul Kenny trained at Pinsent Masons.
The promotions in full
Louisa Chambers, commercial, IP and technology, London
Stephen Whitfield, competition, London
Dan McNamee, corporate finance and US securities law, London
Client intake sets the tone for the entire attorney-client relationship. Often overlooked and rarely reimagined, it is a critical component in running a more client-centric and efficient law firm. For many firms, this important first step remains a stumbling point that is still highly manual and prone to typos.
Join Clio’s lawyer-in-residence, Joshua Lenon, along with Michael Chasin, founder of Lexicata, as they teach you how to transform your firm’s intake process beyond notes on a legal pad, cumbersome paper forms, and outdated Word documents, with a modern and automated approach.
Q: How important a role does IT play in your job, and what is your experience of service providers and their systems?
Sharon Harris, UltraElectronics: I ask myself, what would my life be if my IT was different? I’m interested in getting some ideas about quick wins.
Christine Notarianni, Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust: You’re all probably aware that the NHS is going through massive digitisation and transformation and part of my role is to look at commercial risk and legal risk – and of course everything is managed on a shoestring.
Jonathan Cope, RSA: I work in an industry where data and IT is increasingly at the forefront of people’s thinking, in particular telematics, and I think RSA is at the cutting edge of that. I’m interested in how we can apply those technological advancements internally to the legal function and driving performance of external legal firms.
Catie Sheret, Pearson: We’ve got quite a big legal team – over 200. The team I manage is part of international markets – Asia, Africa, Australia, so quite a broad range of countries and because we’re quite big we’ve managed to get some leverage with the IT department in getting funding.
There’s a lot of stuff out there – Serengeti, Echosign, we’ve had Docusign. There’ve been a few implementations of varying degrees of success. Something that bailed recently was around self-service and the supplier pulled out because the integration didn’t work. So it’s a mixed bag of experience.
Delegates share their experiences
Martin Cohen, Home Retail Group: We’re just on the verge of deploying our own document management system. It’s IManage which is an HP solution sold through Acertus, formerly Huron Legal. It’s been a very interesting journey to get there from the ground floor – we had a very clear idea what we wanted. Being a small legal team in a large non-legal organisation, it’s difficult to make people understand what it is and why it’s not to be feared how it can help us, give us additional capacity and make us efficient and effective.
Knowing what we wanted but playing by the rules working with the procurement team, and the IT security team, taking their advice and understanding where they were coming from – it’s probably been about 18 months from the beginning to implementation.
Jonathan Cope, RSA: Have you had pressure from the business to justify it in terms of cost savings?
Martin Cohen, Home Retail Group: It all came about because of non-digital, analogue reasons. Like many businesses, we operated paper files and they were stored in a document archive. Then the business began looking at resources and wanted to close it and do more online –and there was also a cost focus on the support staff who operated it. So there were twin drivers of the change.
But because we support a lot of larger IT projects, although for our team it was a lot of money, the business does far, far larger IT deals worth hundreds of thousands of pounds and up. But it was a challenge for us to get there.
Jonathan Cope and Catie Sheret
<pAndrew Levy, Stagecoach: Did you scope what you wanted?
Martin Cohen, Home Retail Group: Yes, we started with the simple idea – what do our panel firms use? We spoke to a few suppliers and asked Acertus which other retailers use what systems, and identified John Lewis and Asda for feedback [on IManage]. It’s an excellent system but you have to make sure you focus on training.
Andrew Levy, Stagecoach: Are you captive to them?
Martin Cohen, Home Retail Group: We had to break it down and get into more detail than we’d otherwise have thought – look at the file format, what happens if they plain go bust, how to access the data, how they back off their contractual relationships to HP or Microsoft or whoever provides the cloud hosting and the idea is we leapfrog that to get access to the data. But you’re right, we’re a critical compliance function.
If it goes down then overnight we’ve just lost legal – much in the same way as if there was a fire in the archives. It’s definitely a concern.
Maria Passermard; Sam Roberts and Christine Notarianni
Maria Passermard, John Lewis: We went through the process that Martin’s going through now – we signed up, got trained, and then the business announced it was moving to Google – Googlemail, Googledocs, but Google didn’t talk to Worksite [now IManage] so the legal team had to stay on Lotus Notes.
If the business makes a decision for the good of the whole business, it doesn’t always take legal into account. But tax, treasury and the like all need document management systems not all of which are compatible with Google.
We’ve now asked our IT team to find a solution to this and we’ve tasked them with coming up with a group IT strategy. We do need to be able to access information that we’ve got on compliance risk, or if someone wants to see what advice we gave two years ago. Legal are not the only people who need to know how to do that – tax, treasury and so on have similar issues about being able to claw back data and information. So we’ve looked at taking our data off Worksite within a year of paying for it. We would have been able to do it if we needed to, but in a format we can move and migrate.
Catie Sheret, Pearson: They’ve got you over a barrel though, pricing-wise.
Q: What is your experience of using the cloud and the impact on risk management?
Natalie, Enterprise Rent A Car: A lot of cloud providers make sure there’s data portability – you learn to look at the due diligence and ask the right questions. There’s a standard checklist, especially when data was being served out of the US.
Generally with cloud providers you should be okay but there are interoperability issues. But how do you ensure something’s future-proof? Big players have the infrastructure – and there are big companies swallowing up smaller companies – it’s a gamble.
Delegates discuss their IT challenges
Something we haven’t touched on, is do you come up with an organic system of your own? A lot of companies can do this in-house. So when do you leverage your own infrastructure and get them to build something rather than go to an external provider? My old company was an ERP [enterprise resource planning] platform provider and we ended up tasking them with coming up with a solution for some of our procurement contracts. As it was based on data mining, we asked is they could create their own self-service tool?
Martin Cohen, Home Retail Group: We advise our organisations all the time on levels of risk – other people have made similar decisions in the business.
Natalie Salunke, Enterprise Rent A Car: We’re not used to making the decision, we’re used to advising on the decision.
Martin Cohen, Home Retail Group: Yes, we’re used to handing over the decision, but as lawyers we need to get our business hats on and think about how we manage our little business. The risk I take is no different from what IT and other teams are taking.
Q: Do legal teams need a separate IT system from the rest of the business, and is it best to go bespoke or off-the-shelf?
Christine Notarianni, Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust: My business has a hundred, which is worse than none. We have the procurement department, we have the finance department, we have general managers able to sign off contracts, private patients, we’ve got a charity arm, all of them have their own system. So if my board ask me what’s the contractual risk for my organisation I wouldn’t be able to provide them with certainty.
Sharon Harris, UltraElectronics: The question is: what problems are you trying to solve? For me, it’s one version of the truth accessed by the right people at the right time. There’s a difference between data and information. I’ve got all this data but not in a form that creates a picture.
Jonathan Cope, RSA: We’re talking about document management systems, but your average law firm was doing this 30, 40 years ago.
Sharon Harris, UltraElectronics: My preference is off-the-shelf. I hate the word bespoke. I’ve just come from a meeting about risk and risk registers and lots of providers will give you a solution with bells and whistles. But I was talking to someone from PwC, and they are going to give something free to us for a year.
He showed me a page and explained that this would be our dashboard. We will agree measures we want to see and see that in a graph format – and then I can make that phone call if I need to.
l-r: Andrew Levy; Natalie Salunke and Sharon Harris
Natalie Salunke, Enterprise Rent A Car: Is that for legal or is it a business tool?
Sharon Harris, UltraElectronics: Legal is just me along with lots of commercial directors and people – it’s about giving the business access and information for them to do things with. Not for me.
Natalie Salunke, Enterprise Rent A Car: Do people embrace that? The problem that I’ve come across generally is that the sales people don’t want to take on additional responsibility beyond getting the sale closed. They don’t want to log into a tool that isn’t Salesforce or whatever system you use. How do you get them to buy into it? I can say: ‘Yes, I’m going to empower you’, but how do I get them to be empowered?
Sharon Harris, UltraElectronics: The system I’m looking at is a repository of information. I explained to the salesman at PwC that he needs to speak to our head of cybersecurity – it’s not about documents and policies, it’s a conversation between their IT person and our head of cybersecurity and getting them comfortable.
Maria Passermard, John Lewis: We looked at lots of document management and repository systems – but I found there was a difference with Worksite [IManage], as you can work collaboratively in terms of emails. So much advice is done by emails. I couldn’t find many other systems on the market where documents and emails were accessible.
Sharon Harris, UltraElectronics: You’d have to upload material specifically. But I like that –
I don’t want everybody’s emails.
What other IT concerns do you have?
Natalie Salunke, Enterprise Rent A Car: What about things like data tagging? I haven’t embraced the conversation yet because I know from the US we’ll be getting a workshare model – and we’re used to that from a law firm background. A lot of these tools are looking at document retention but what about that extra layer of getting data analytics? How do you tag data – so in the contracts do you track rate increases, or if you’re selling a business, tracking change of control clauses in there?
Christina Notarianni, Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust: I talked to my colleagues and asked how am I even going to get hold of the information to do data analytics. My board just want red, amber or green. So I spoke to some e-disclosure companies and asked how I can do this.
Natalie Salunke, Enterprise Rent A Car: That’s really clever.
Sam Roberts, One Savings Bank: I was at a conference and a provider was talking about doing a contract repository system, but they would point it at servers, and it crawls all over them and it will recognise what you need – different clauses and how they’re drafted. It’s pricey, but for organisations of scale it would seem to be a good deal.
Jonathan Cope, RSA: That would transform the M&A process. We went through a huge disposal programme, and yes it’s less relevant on the sell-side but looking from an external law firm’s perspective, you wouldn’t have to use teams of junior associates, you could press a button. If you can present yourself to a client that you can do a deal for £50k rather than £200k you can win every mandate in the market and say you’ve got a robot going slightly hot in the basement – and it doesn’t have to sleep or eat.
Lisa Mayhew, Berwin Leighton Paisner: It might not be quite there yet, but there are different ways of automating. I’m interested in what you’re saying about approaching e-disclosure companies. We already have intelligent systems that will predict likely relevance and therefore discoverability of a document. So as a first, flypast on an automated basis can get the first funnelling done. I know a lot of US firms are alive to this development – think of class action claims with armies of paralegals spending months doing massive discovery exercises. The ideal is that that will get shrunk by technology in a big way. In the UK they’ve gone down that mental journey and accepted that’s the way the world is going.
Martin Cohen
Martin Cohen, Home Retail Group: It breaks down for me into two things. What do you need for extraordinary transactions or disputes and what do you need for day-to-day work? I’m in a business where we’ve done a couple of big deals in the past six months… if you’re selling a business like Homebase, you would expect to get in large firms that can throw bodies at doing the disclosure work. Or if I’ve got a big piece of litigation I can get an IT company in to scan the documents.
It would be great to have that on a day-to-day basis, but I’ll have to wait until it’s a desk-top application easily managed, installed and adopted. It may be that turning to your external firm is the way to get there.
Natalie Salunke, Enterprise Rent A Car: That’s a really good point. Why not leverage the external provider, and their buying capacity – say to them, you’ve got these tools and the expertise and continuous use of fixing bugs.
Christina Notarianni, Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust: Understanding the risk landscape allows my organisation to future-proof risk. So for me legal is only another part of risk management – along with procurement and finance we’re part of the risk structure and together that can mitigate a lot. But we often work in isolation.
Sharon Harris, UltraElectronics: In terms of files I see everyone’s professional files as part of my filing system. I should be able to access what I paid for at any point rather than want the law firm to give it to me. There’s lots of things we all do in our personal life very easily and when we turn it into professional life it becomes hard.
Sam Roberts, One Savings Bank: It’ll be a new paradigm with the GDPR – the General Data Protection Regulation – because as a consumer you’ll be able to access your data anytime you want. So why as a consumer of legal services can we not access our data already? Why do we not have the same system?
Jonathan Cope, RSA: It would be useful to log on to something and see all documents in relation to transactions and billing.
Lisa Mayhew
Lisa Mayhew, Berwin Leighton Paisner: Law firms will host extranets – everything you’re describing is normal.
Catie Sheret, Pearson: But you have to ask for it.
Sharon Harris, UltraElectronics: Yes, it’s not day to day, it’s for a specific topic or litigation – it’s not business as usual.
Natalie Salunke, Enterprise Rent A Car: Do law firms have infrastructure to support that dashboard or that pick and choose mentality? Practical Law – probably on the back of Serengeti – are looking to provide a platform for in-house practitioners and dashboards to manage teams, look at utilisation rates and so on, but they all depend on law firms buying in and putting data in there.
It’s a two-pronged approach. First, how are we going to get to that endpoint and second, who’s innovating? That’s where we’re all moving to, a 360-degree view of all clients, or one-platform exercises.
We’re good at giving advice but taking advice is our biggest hurdle. We’re all lawyers and we’ve all got a mental block on innovation and creativity – that’s what the sales team does, but we have to preserve our function to make it valuable and efficient. So the deeper question is whether there is anything out there – what we have isn’t good enough.
Christine Notarianni, Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust: We have pure legal systems that manage pure legal matters but we also need to manage in a different way that covers legal function but also the business.
Martin Cohen, Home Retail Group: Where innovation is coming from is from big law firms, big transactions, e-disclosure. All these technologies exist, hopefully they’ll slowly migrate. But when it comes to analytics you might say to the CEO or CFO I’ve reviewed all matters and my risk level is here, and my capacity utilisation here – but if you don’t speak business or report in the way that your organisation likes to view risk, then you won’t be heard.
Of the ten or eleven companies sitting round in this table there are ten or eleven reporting systems and it’s either the job of the system – that hot robot in the basement – or, it’s a new role of the in-house lawyer to take this insight from the system and deliver it in a way they understand.
Sharon Harris, UltraElectronics: We have lots of reports and I can assess, through lots of answers to those questions, the health of businesses around compliance, health and safety and risk. I’ve created in a cumbersome way a spreadsheet that can track it.
What I want to do is give that to other people so that they can see it and they can mange their own risks. We have shared areas and I put it on there and I say to people – let’s have a conversation about it. So even if we could get a solution it’s about behaviours, getting people to want to engage with it.
Jonathan Cope, RSA: As an in-house lawyer you go to external lawyers because you need specific legal advice – well, there are going to be software programmes that will sift vast amounts of information. It’s not difficult to imagine a complete change of relationship in 30 years’ time between client and law firm.
To find out about previous The Lawyer and BLP GC2B roundtables,please contact Lisa Mayhew at lisa.mayhew@blplaw.com. To read previous GC2B features, go to TheLawyer.com/GC2B
The High Court has made a landmark ruling on the UK’s first contested use of predictive coding in a litigation disclosure exercise.
Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) secured a victory for its client, BCA Trading, on Tuesday (17 May) in the form of an order to use predictive coding technology as part of a substantial document review.
The ruling marks the first time such an order has been granted.
BLP is defending BCA in the unfair prejudice action, brought by Candey client David Brown.
BLP’s team on the case is being led by litigation and corporate risk partner Oliver Glynn-Jones. The team also includes senior associate Robin Ganguly, associate Rebecca Wardle and trainee Alasdair McAlpine. Glynn-Jones has instructed One Essex Court’s Sa’ad Hossain QC.
Candey partner Andrew Dunn has instructed 4 Stone Buildings’ John Brisby QC and Alex Cook on the claim. Candey solicitor-advocate Tim Wright handled the advocacy in Tuesday’s hearing.
Glynn-Jones said that BLP was one of only a few firms with its own in-house data processing, hosting and document review capability, and was “almost unique” in having an in-house predictive coding resource.
“This latest court order is a significant win for our team, and an excellent demonstration of the opportunity provided by this technology,” added Glynn-Jones.
Predictive coding, or machine learning technology, has the potential to dramatically reduce the cost of the e-disclosure process. It has been gaining wider acceptance in the UK recently although it has been used for several years in the US.
The first formal judicial endorsement of the use of predictive coding came earlier this year in the Pyrrho Investments Ltd v MWB Property Ltd case. In that case Master Matthews, the co-author of the leading text on the subject of disclosure, granted approval for its use for the first time in English High Court proceedings.
In predictive coding a senior lawyer reviews a small “seed set” of documents, which is then analysed by the technology and used to generate a further sample for review.
BLP says that via a process of iterative refinement the algorithm can reach a level of review accuracy that can be applied across the entire dataset, identifying relevant documents in a manner that is more efficient and scalable than a traditional document review.
The technology will not only reduce the cost of e-disclosure, it also opens up new opportunities such as early case assessment, since it enables lawyers to quickly identify the most highly relevant documents at a much earlier stage than through a traditional review.
The legal line-up
For the claimant, David Brown
4 Stone Buildings’ John Brisby QC and Alex Cook, instructed by Candey partner Andrew Dunn
For the defendant, BCA Trading
One Essex Court’s Sa’ad Hossain QC, instructed by BLP partner Oliver Glynn-Jones
Next week The Lawyer will be hosting a live webcast in association with FTI Consulting on the topic of predictive coding. The webcast will feature Jonathan Fowler, senior director and predictive coding expert at FTI Consulting, Giulia Da Re, litigation lawyer for Lloyds Banking Group and Mark Chesher, legal director for Addleshaw Goddard.
It is free and takes place on 25 May at 12pm. Register here.
Hill Dickinson has made up three lawyers to its partnership in its annual promotions round, including two in Manchester.
Manchester pensions specialist Paula Warnock and employment lawyer Michael Wright both join the partnership alongside London-based shipping lawyer Jeff Park.
Hill Dickinson has also promoted 10 lawyers to legal director and 18 to senior associate.
While Warnock is the only new female partner, more than 50 per cent of all the promotions are female.
None of the new partners trained at Hill Dickinson. Warnock joined the firm in 2013 from Mercer, where she provided pensions advice to trustees and employers. Wright started his career at Weightmans and moved to Hill Dickinson from Freeths in 2013.
Meanwhile Korean-born Park joined Hill Dickinson in 2006, having previously worked at Korean insurer Wilson Korea.
Last year Hill Dickinson made up two partners, at the same time as announcing redundancies to its insurance team.
Gateley’s revenue has increased by 10 per cent from £60m to £66m in its first full year as a listed entity.
The firm also reported that adjusted earnings before interest and tax (EBITDA) stood at £12.6m for the 2015/16 financial year.
The results are consistent with the firm’s half-year figures, which increased 10.9 per cent from 26.7m to £29.6m.
Gateley CEO Michael Ward said: “In a market that continues to be challenging the board has remained focused on the execution of our stated strategy of long-term organic and acquisitive growth.”
The results are the first full year results announced since the firm floated on AIM last year. Gateley was the first UK law firm to take advantage of its alternative business structure (ABS) licence by listing on the London Stock Exchange.
The initial public offering valued the firm at £100m and raised £30m in capital during its first day of trading. The selling shareholders raised £25m in gross proceeds while the company raised £5m.
Gateley pledged to use the funds raised to grow and diversify its business through acquisitions. The first of such acquisitions took place last month when Gateley bought tax advisory business Capitus for £2.72m.
Capitus advises investors on commercial property transactions and generated £1.38m in turnover in 2014/15. The business is now known as Gateley Capitus and operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of Gateley Plc.
Following today’s results announcement Gateley’s share price rose 4.6 per cent from 103p to 107.7p. The board is set to announce a dividend in July 2016.
No5 Chambers has entered three teams into this years Legal Walks across the UK. The 10km sponsored walks around Birmingham, London and Leicester help to raise much needed funds to charities that provide life changing legal advice and representation to those in need.
The London Legal Walk which took place on Monday 16 May 2016, started at Carey Street, just off Chancery Lane and ended at The Law Society. Walkers from No5 Chambers included: Anthony Korn, Kevin Leigh, Nicholas Cobill, Varsha Jagadesham, Jessica Seaton, Stephen Goodfellow, Caroline Jennings, Oscar Redif, Calum Luxmoore, Cameron Grant and Julia Bwoma. Our team walked with The Lord Chief Justice and many more lawyers to raise funds.
The No5 Birmingham team included Mark Anderson QC, Jodie Kembery, Alexander Mellis, Christopher Perry, Nicola Preston, Julia Bwoma, William Theaker, Brett Moloney, Jo Pickersgill, Elisha Pye, Daniel Griffiths, Craig Wain, Adam Bates, Peter Green, Joshua Worthington, Charlotte Wilson and James Ashford.
Following this year’s results, the firm announced a 5.5 per cent bonus to all employees as part of its annual performance award scheme.
It has gained a variety of new clients over the past year, including Bvlgari, Gala Bingo, Papa Johns and PCT Healthcare. The firm also won the most seats alongside Blake Morgan within the Welsh Government’s £60m legal panel.
Outer Temple Chambers is pleased to announce that it will play a significant role in the St Petersburg International Legal Forum which is being held between 18 and 21 May 2016 in Russia.
The initiative is spearheaded by Alexey Karpenko, an Outer Temple Professional Associate, who is the senior partner at Forward Legal, in Moscow.
Joint Heads of Chambers, Michael Bowes QC and Andrew Spink QC, together with David Russell QC, Fiona Scolding and Miranda de Savorgnani will give talks on Trusts, Regulation of Company Groups, International Tax rules, Public Procurement, Banking Regulation and International Arbitration to an audience of Russian government representatives, the judiciary, international organisations, General Counsel of Russian corporations and the international media.
The official programme will cover topics as Private Law, Corporate Practice/International Trade/Competition, Litigation and Arbitration Practice, Smart Society, Investments / Finance, International law, Rule of Law, Cultural Heritage/ Public Interest / Environment and Legal Profession.
Alongside the official programme, Outer Temple will be participating in several satellite legal events hosted by Russia’s RBC network, a large business media group. The events are centred around Case studies and practical aspects of Arbitration and Litigation, and are designed to showcase the ability and expertise of the UK Bar in leading bespoke international legal projects.
This is an opportunity for Outer Temple to demonstrate its expertise at the legal heart of a jurisdiction which continues to be very taken with UK law, courts and arbitration.
The doctrine of contractual estoppel has been developed in the context of disputes arising from the financial crisis but is now being argued and applied in a far wider range of cases – should the law impose any limits and would this be consistent with the fundamental principle of freedom of contract?
The event will be held on 21 June 2016 in the Auditorium at Herbert Smith Freehills, Exchange House, Primrose Street, London EC2A 2HS.
