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Upgrading Litigation Support Technology

By Joseph Perkovich
December 28, 2006

Dorsey & Whitney LLP is a firm of more than 600 lawyers with a litigation and arbitration practice in 15 locations in the United States and in London, Hong Kong and Shanghai. I joined the firm's New York office in the fall of 2005 and assumed, among other duties, the task of advising on the litigation department's deployment of discovery technology for large and complex matters. Before arriving at Dorsey, I had trained for several years in a litigation practice involving a broad range of suits and regulatory investigations implicating multiple jurisdictions and thus had become steeped in many of the electronic evidence and discovery issues facing the firm's New York-based international practice.

Just weeks before my arrival at the firm, Dorsey had taken on a federal litigation for a longstanding client, a U.S. subsidiary of a Japanese global technology concern. The litigation had evolved into a class action, consolidating several consumer suits alleging damages of more than one billion dollars. Discovery proceeded along a brisk schedule set in the Southern District of New York, arguably the world's most sophisticated court with regard to electronic discovery issues. In part due to the management of the electronic evidence in this dispute, Dorsey's client obtained an order in September 2006 denying class certification and strongly pointing toward the ultimate disposal of the matter. As discussed below, our implementation of the Ringtail Legal 2005 hosted ASP solution ' and the support by FTI Consulting ' was important in this very favorable outcome.

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