With an expected increase in demand in 2010 for expert witnesses in many areas of litigation, the search for credible and trained experts is critical to a case.
Today, Thomson Reuters announced it has acquired Round Table Group, a leading provider of expert witness consulting services to litigators.
Round Table Group provides expert witnesses on hundreds of subject matters, with a network of over 100,000 expert witnesses, including industry experts, corporate executives and academics, and a database of proprietary expert content reaching over 750,000 records. It serves Amlaw 200 and boutique law firms.
The acquisition also allows the expansion of Westlaw’s expert witness content, primarily expert resumes, articles, video content and trial documents, allowing litigators even greater access to case critical information in a fully linked and integrated environment.
The Round Table Group was founded in 1994 and employs approximately two dozen people in five locations: Chicago, Boston, Dallas, New York City and Washington, D.C.
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With some prominent examples recently, law firms are finding themselves the targets of disqualification motions filed by former clients.
A post titled “Conflict Disqualification: Anti-Takeover Tactic… or Just a Cigar?’ from Erik Krusch, on Westlaw Business Currents, examines some high-profile disqualification suits.
He outlines the legal issues in cases involving Air Products & Chemicals, Airgas and Cravath; and matters between Dow Chemical and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and Rohm & Haas, among others.
You can read the full post on Westlaw Business Currents.
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The law, and dispute resolution, has changed quite a bit globally over the last decade. We wanted to get some thoughts on this topic from Dr. Paul Vout, who practices equity and commercial law in Australia. He’s also a contributor to the ALR International series recently published by West and a member of the editorial advisory board for the series.
Vout said one of the biggest changes has been the capacity for disputes to arise quickly across a wide range of jurisdictions. (more…)
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A new FindLaw.com survey wanted to find out how younger people in the United States are being treated by financial institutions when it come to applying for loans, credit cards or a mortgage.
The results show they’re more than twice as likely to be turned down.
About one in five (22%) people between the ages of 18 and 34 said they were refused a mortgage, loan or credit card within the last year. That’s more than twice the percentage of any other age group.
They’re four times more likely to say they’ve been turned down than people age 55 and up.
Credit card denials top the list (15%).
Anyone applying to borrow money must meet strict standards set by the financial institution they approach. Younger people, according to Stephanie Rahlfs, an attorney and editor with FindLaw.com, often have had less time and opportunity to establish a credit history.
Rahlfs suggests you should be diligent about monitoring your credit score, correcting any errors in your credit report and building a good history of managing credit and loans.
The FindLaw.com survey was conducted using a demographically balanced telephone survey of 1,000 American adults and has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3 percent.
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Our colleagues at Westlaw Business recently put together a roundtable discussion of some of the leading legal experts in Islamic finance to discuss its key trends and challenges. The result, is a post titled “Westlaw Business Talks: Islamic Finance Legal Leaders Turn to Dubai World” on Westlaw Business Currents.
The panel included a regulator, two Shariah scholars and four Islamic finance attorneys. A Reuters journalist, Shaheen Pasha, and Jack Bunker of Westlaw Business, moderated the discussion.
As Bunker writes in his recap, the discussion’s starting point was the Dubai World restructuring and its implications. The roundtable also searched for some of the lessons learned from the Dubai World and other high-profile defaults.
Muddassir Siddiqui, who heads the Islamic Finance Middle East practice for the law firm of Denton, Wilde & Sapte, said there’s a “mismatch” of factors in the situation:
…People who bought these sukuk, they were really not, most of them, interested in the asset.” Some of them did not even know “what the assets are, and in the Nakheel case, they were an asset in the form of a lease, which was the asset which was subleased from one entity to another, but not the land on the ground.”
While Michael J.T. McMillen of Fulbright & Jaworski said the lessons of the situation are being taken to heart:
The Dubai World/Nakheel publicity “is demystifying” Islamic finance instruments. “It’s getting people to look at the essence of that instrument. So in a way, I think this was good – we knew it was going to happen at some point.” In “any market you’re going to have bankruptcies; you’re going to have problems, and it was just a matter of time.”
You can read the full post on Westlaw Business Currents.
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We had a busy week here on Legal Current out at LegalTech New York. But so did many journalists, bloggers and analysts who covered the show for their respective Web sites and publications.
So, it makes sense to use this weekly look at law-related blog and news links to focus on some of the content created at and about LegalTech:
Bob Ambrogi – LawSites
Monica Bay – Law Technology News
John Bringardner – Law.com
Christy Burke – Legal IT
Adrian Dayton – Marketing Strategy and the Law
Sean Doherty – Law.com
Rick Georges – Futurelawyer
Ari Kaplan – Law.com’s Legal Technology Blog
The Orange Rag’s LegalQB blog via Inside Legal
The Posse List
Donna Seyle – Freelance Law Firm
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I had the opportunity to attend LegalTech New York 2010 and, in addition to witnessing the launch of our new product WestlawNext, I have been attending some of the sessions at the conference.
Since so much of this show focuses on discovery, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that affect discovery (especially e-discovery) loom large here in New York during LegalTech.
As a principal attorney editor for West, my team in Rochester, New York handles a number of treatises and practice guides involving litigation and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (and e-discovery for that matter). So I attended the session titled Amending the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, outlining recent movements to overhaul the FRCP and the federal rulemaking process to deal with some of the issues and the soaring costs of litigation in federal courts. (more…)
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We caught up with Ari Kaplan at LegalTech New York. As a member of the LegalTech board, Kaplan stays close to the trends affecting the legal technology landscape. He’s a freelance writer as well as a West author (The Opportunity Maker: Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development) and speaks frequently around the United States about the legal profession.
He moderated a panel discussion today at LegalTech on the issues involved in bringing e-discovery in-house.
In this video clip, we asked Kaplan what law practice trends he’s been paying attention to the most. He focused on efficiency, as in the case of staffing, client management and casework:
Kaplan also said he feels like attendees at LegalTech this year “have a sense of renewed optimism” after a tough 2009. “People are feeling excitement – measured excitement – but excited abut what’s possible this year,” said Kaplan. “You don’t don’t know what’s going to work and what’s not going to work, but I like that idea that people are excited about the possibilities.”
By the way, Kaplan says his favorite personal efficiency tool lately is the Dragon Dictation app for his iPhone.
In additon to his work with LegalTech, Kaplan also is on the Law Technology News Editorial Advisory Board and is a a regular contributor to the Law.com Legal Technology blog.
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What are the top issues raised in recent disclosures, SEC correspondence, and other related documents? This year’s annual reports will no doubt get close looks from regulators and shareholders. On Westlaw Business Currents, Jesse Morton just launched an annual report disclosure series.
Morton’s post, titled “Preparing for 2010: Major Disclosure Trends 2009,” addresses the questions related to what should be disclosed, especially after such a challenging year.
Morton writes:
…the overriding themes to 2009 were, broadly speaking, threefold: First, companies across a multitude of sectors benefitted from government stimulus programs intended to curb the effects of the recession; second, no company was immune from the rippling effects of the global economic downturn; and third, a plethora of increased corporate governance measures were often adopted to avoid scrutiny, or even lawsuits, by investors, or a fine issued by a newly robust SEC.
You can read the full post on Westlaw Business Currents.
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The decision to hire a lawyer doesn’t always mean you’re in trouble, does it?
According to a new FindLaw.com survey, one in five Americans faced a legal issue in 2009 that could have involved hiring an attorney.
Here’s a breakdown of some of the survey’s results:
*More than one out of every 10 Americans (12%) say they did hire a lawyer in the last year
*22% say they had a legal issue in the last year that potentially warranted hiring an attorney
So, when did a lawyer get a call most often?
Divorce, estate planning and housing issues ranked highest. People involved in lawsuits or civil actions, personal injury, and discrimination issues were the least likely to hire an attorney.
The most common legal issues overall in 2009 were lawsuits or civil law matters (25%), estate planning or wills (22%), housing (20%) and personal injury (15%).
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Thomson Reuters, Legal, President & CEO Peter Warwick offered his perspective on the company’s approach to the current economic reality in a panel discussion, “Adapting and Thriving in a Challenging Economy”, at the Minnesota Venture & Finance Conference.
The launch of WestlawNext brings a significant advancement in the way professional legal research is done.
Andrew F. Popper, a professor at American University, Washington College of Law, talks about his award-winning novel “Rediscovering Lone Pine.”
