Bloomberg Law
July 15, 2016, 5:05 PM UTC

The Evolving Post-Discovery Litigation Business (Perspective)

Editor’s Note: The author is a litigation services and technology entrepreneur.

With the emergence of scalable cloud technology designed specifically for the post-discovery litigation process, we’re beginning to see dramatic developments in the modernization of courtrooms, law firms and legal departments around the world. Courtrooms in the UK and Singapore have shown that existing tools can be deployed to conduct trials with little or no paper and provide opposing parties, attorneys, judges and witnesses with secure, electronic access to all relevant materials for the life of a case.

Below, I answer some basic questions about how courtrooms in the UK and Singapore are moving beyond e-filing initiatives and embracing the concept of the fully electronic courtroom. Attorneys in the US are beginning to deploy the same technology used in overseas courtrooms to create electronic “workspaces” that facilitate collaboration during case analysis and help case teams prepare for motions, depositions, negotiations, trial and other hearings.

Q. Can you pinpoint a particular case or event that marked a shift toward electronic litigation in Europe?

A. Yes, there was a highly publicized commercial trial in 2011 in the UK involving two Russian billionaires, Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky. The dispute was enormous and worth billions of dollars. The trial bundle comprised more than 5,000 e-discovery documents in multiple languages, not to mention hundreds of expert reports, countless citations from case law and other research, applications/motions, real-time court transcripts, witness statements, exhibits, pre-trial orders — you get the idea.

The unique thing about this trial was that the court actually mandated digital collaboration among the parties using cloud-based electronic trial bundle technology. All the parties and their lawyers and the judge were able to access, view and manage court documents from a web-based interface. With no need to print and deliver multiple copies of the bundles, cost savings were dramatic. The new efficiencies were also impressive. For example, project managers created nearly 19,000 live hyperlinks among documents and specific passages during the trial, making the process of preparing for questioning and constructing compelling legal arguments far easier and much faster than it would have been using paper. Another judge who has used the technology in the courtroom estimated a 30 percent time savings.

Q: What technological changes are taking place in the civil courts in the UK in the wake of the Berezovsky v Abramovich case?

A: Now that the technology has been proven, the UK has begun an aggressive initiative to modernize civil courts across the country. Lawyers are effectively using the leadership and funding provided by the Ministry of Justice and the advocacy of some prominent judges — and it’s working. The Rolls Building in London, where the Berezovsky trial took place and the center of international dispute resolution in the UK, is taking the lead with their new electronic filing and case management system, called CE-File.

Q: Outside of the UK, in what other regions of the world are you seeing a digital litigation evolution?

A: Singapore has emerged as the indisputable leader in Asia, laying claim to “the world’s first nationwide paperless litigation” system. Singapore got a very early start, piloting an electronic filing system (EFS) in 1997 and making it mandatory in 2000. They’ve now replaced EFS with a nationwide system for electronic courtrooms called eLitigation—again, a cloud-based system that requires no installation of software on local computers.

The Singapore Academy of Law, the equivalent of the ABA in the U.S., was vital in developing the country’s vision for electronic litigation, issuing a “Roadmap” for the implementation of legal technology nearly 10 years ago, which among other things developed the concept of digital “war rooms” for each side in a dispute where litigants and lawyers could communicate and collaborate in a virtual environment, and where all the materials related to a case would be available in real time at every stage in the litigation process leading up to and including, trial. The “war room” concept is now becoming a reality.

Q: What are the keys to success on this modernization movement in Singapore?

A: There is a real shared commitment, with a true partnership between the government and the private sector. Collectively, they adopted technology that would modernize the entire legal process in stages, one bit at a time—from e-filing to collaborative case management to management of the litigation process inside the courtroom. Another important factor has been Singapore’s goal to be a top destination for international dispute resolution, exemplified by the launch of Maxwell Chambers in 2010.

Q: Where does the U.S. fit into this eLitigation revolution?

A: The US is just starting to embrace the “big vision” in which the entire litigation cycle transitions to a process that is faster, more transparent and more efficient. Instead, it is a slower, more iterative process, with technologies being implemented in one court and one jurisdiction at a time. The focus, however, is still on e-filing and presentation in the courtroom rather than the digitization of the entire litigation process.

Q: What are some of the barriers of transitioning to electronic systems that US lawyers face compared to other countries? Are there examples of states that are making these transitions?

A: The most obvious barrier to digitizing litigation in the US is fragmentation. Every state does things differently, and within states modernization projects are in different stages in different local jurisdictions. Counties with larger populations and more resources are much more likely to have implemented some kind of electronic initiative.

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