PREPARING YOUR COMPANY FOR A DISPUTE
2020 has been a year of uncertainty. Against a backdrop of challenging economic conditions, many are experiencing a rise in disputes, previously signed contracts are being scrutinised closer than ever before, and the volume (and value) of disputes are increasing. ‘Bet the company’ disputes are on the rise.
Despite this, many have restricted budgets with which to cover the costs of litigation or arbitration. In this article we examine ways companies can better prepare for and reduce the legal cost of dispute resolution.
We suggest six areas where companies can improve their internal processes in order to reduce spend on legal costs: (i) data; (ii) initial opinions; (iii) avoiding ‘learning curves’; (iv) kick-off meetings; (v) communication protocols; and (vi) pre-dispute advice.
Data
Data and document management are rarely exciting, but data is the evidence a company has to support its case or disprove the other side’s case. Data is found in a variety of locations: hard copy, hard drives, portable devices (laptops, phones, WhatsApp accounts, etc.) and on servers.
Loss of data will likely only add to your legal costs. Some organisations do not retain email accounts or other communications (e.g., WhatsApp messages) of employees who leave the business. Some companies use automated data deletion processes. The danger if data is deleted is that companies (and their external lawyers) will not know of potentially relevant information until the other side provides it. Late discovery of data could lead to a complete rethink of dispute strategy and amendments to the statements of case already filed. This will drive up cost significantly. For this, and other reasons, it is important that relevant data preservation measures are in place.
Jan-Mar 2021 issue
DWF (Middle East) LLP