Millnet shows how litigation can be cost-effective

There’s a big debate going on.

Many PLCs think that litigation in the UK is simply too expensive - the costs are thought to be much higher in the UK than in continental Europe. The main reason, it is argued, is the fixed hourly rate basis, win or lose, on which lawyers have traditionally operated.

There is a growing demand for new and creative ways of funding litigation that better align the interests of the client and the lawyer by sharing the risk.  These new mechanisms include conditional fee arrangements, after the event insurance and third-party funding.

The key to this risk-sharing approach is early case assessment and the need to determine very quickly and at minimum cost whether there is a viable case.

Our client, Millnet, has many years’ experience in the e-discovery field and its new Smart e-Discovery suite is targeted at reducing litigation costs across the entire discovery process, particularly in quickly and cost-effectively searching and categorising thousands or even millions of potentially responsive emails and other electronic documents.
 
Costs start in the hundreds rather than thousands of pounds.

At the heart of Smart e-Discovery, the Nuix engine represents a quantum increase in the processing power of existing systems and an innovative, dynamic visual interface. The power at the front end means that Millnet can do the crunching – terabytes in a fraction of the time it can take with some existing systems on the market. The commensurate cost reduction means e-discovery becomes affordable, even on matters for which it would not previously have been proportionate.

Nuix offers a combination of greatly shortened lead times, substantially reduced costs, powerful, yet easy-to-use, analytical tools and an innovative visual interface (see illustration).

The dynamic network view reveals the email traffic between individuals, highlighting significant and/or unexpected relationships.

Millnet’s price structure is configured in a way that helps reduce the risk; eliminating the front-end loading of setup costs of conventional litigation support systems. In the assessment phase, the client pays only the processing cost of organising and sifting through the data. Processed data is uploaded to a secure web-based review tool (which in itself eliminates the need to consider IT costs and restrictions), and the first month’s hosting is free, allowing for a quick assessment to be made, before real costs begin to be incurred.

“I have personally seen Nuix in action”, says Chris Sherliker, “It is just amazing to see how it can quickly find and group thousands of email threads and conversations. It must be the weapon of choice for any serious litigation firm that is confronted with the task of assimilating hundreds of thousands of emails in order to extract those few emails that may make all the difference between winning and losing.  Any firm that gets this will have an impressive, economical competitive edge over the opposition”

For more information please visit www.millnet.co.uk/smart or email legal@millnet.co.uk.