Anyone who has seen the movie “Paperchase” will have some idea how powerful the process of disclosure is in litigation.
In the film, the protagonists take on a big corporation that subsequently deluges them in irrelevant documents on the basis they would never be able to find the evidential pin in the paper haystack.
Of course, our heroes figure it out. However, over-disclosure is still a problem. Unscrupulous parties can still swamp a good case against them by broadening the scope of the legal issues and insisting on giving and receiving disclosure across the board.
Well-funded lawyers with plenty of paralegals can cope with this pretty easily. In fact, they are probably very glad about the fees they can earn examining tens of thousands of documents that have nothing whatever to do with the core of the dispute.
Our approach is different.
- We believe litigation, with its procedural emphasis on features like disclosure, is a last resort.
- We don’t have any paralegals.
- There is no compulsory disclosure.
- There are no non-core issues.
Instead, we have a relentless focus on bringing the parties together in an environment designed to identify and get to the bottom of the reasons for the dispute and so work out how to fix it. We then negotiate or mediate towards that goal as quickly as possible before the issues – and the costs – have a chance to escalate.
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