It’s getting crowded on the right-side of the EDRM.  Kroll Ontrack has announced it is now providing its clients with document review services.  For the full announcement click here.

Kroll Ontrack already provides paper/e-discovery services, computer forensics, ESI consulting, etc.  The announcement of the launch into document review is natural.  As we have indicated over the last two years and most recently in our ILTA coverage (click here) the trend has been to be a “single service provider” (witness the EMC/Kazeon deal) from collection to production.  It is what law firms have been seeking as they pare down their vendor lists, and what corporations have been seeking as more and more ESI work moves in-house.  The mantra: cost contaiment.   Quoting from the Kroll Ontrack press release: “Document review can account for anywhere between 50 and 90 percent of total litigation costs. Companies and their outside law firms are working to identity strategies to control and reduce these costs.”  

It is why EDD vendors have moved directly into corporations with their (incessant) mantra of “early case assessment” which is critical, of course, to the corporate client.   As the EDD vendors mantra goes:  “the better you assess and plan, the lower the volume of data to review – and review is the biggest cost in the entire process.   Oh, and we do the document review, too.”

It should mean more work for contract attormeys.  Let’s see.  The Kroll Ontrack press release (see link above) provides two email contacts at the end of the piece.   Folks, start your emails.

 Without summer associate programs to rely on, law students are turning to alternate ways of gaining practical experience and making connections that could lead to full-time employment.

Many students are doing externships to fill that need. They work, unpaid, for credit under the supervision of faculty and an on-site attorney at a government agency, nonprofit organization or sometimes a corporation. (By contrast, internships can be for credit or for pay.) American Bar Association rules prohibit law firm externships.

Once thought valuable but not essential, externships are gaining a new stature as students do everything they can to land a job. Demand for, and participation in, externships have increased significantly, according to law school administrators.

For this full article from the National Law Journal click here.

The summer and Labor Day holidays are over, and so we are off.

The ILTA conference (our coverage is here) held two weeks ago was an eye-opener on new trend lines, jobs for contract attorneys, etc. — especially the amount of Federal government work in the pipeline and the surge in work in Europe.  We’ll have more on ILTA later in this post.   First, some general comments on the contract attorney market.

1.   In many areas of the country the contract attorney/document review market seems to have broken open.  We hesitate to say “exploded” but as Gabe Acevedo of the über e-discovery site Gabe’s Guide said “in the old days it would be an uptick.  But in this lousy economy, in this market call it exploded.”

2.  We have posted 87 projects/positions in the last 2 weeks across all 70+ job lists, most being in the South and the West. 

3.   But DC is alive.  In the past 2+ weeks we have seen new projects or ramp ups from Covington and from Crowell (two law firms that do direct hire) plus projects from De Novo, Firm Advice, Hudson, Kelly Law, Lexolution, Palmer, Pat Taylor, Phase Legal, Special Counsel, and Update.  And Fulbright & Jaworski has a monster going: 120+ attorneys in two locations.

4.   NYC has remained fairily moribund.  The subprime and credit-crisis related work we all expected to hit DC and NYC seems to have avoided both markets for the most part although we count a combined 4 “financial crisis related” doc reviews in DC and NYC.  (We use feedback from Posse List members, Kevin LaCroix’s site http://www.dandodiary.com/ and a few other sites to track the progress of cases and their location, and determine which law firms are handling them).

5.   A good portion of the subprime and credit crisis-related doc review work seems to be centered in the Atlanta area, the Carolinas and the Midwest — lower cost regions.  As we have mentioned before, farmshoring has been gaining favor (click here).

6.  That doesn’t discount the projects that have scuppered off to India.  We have received feedback from our India-based Posse List members who work for LPOs (as we have previously reported scores of U.S. attorneys have been hired by LPOs as project managers).   They report 3-4 “credit crisis-related” projects.   We try to rectify those numbers with various media reports (many of dubious validity because they tend to be press releases by LPOs).  But admittedly we do not have full coverage in India.  Of the 85+ Posse List members based in India only about 10-15 report in on a regular basis and they cover only 5 LPOs and there are lots of LPOs out there.

     Note: the summer issue of ACC Docket, the magazine of the Association of Corporate Counsel, did a series on outsourcing and Indian LPOs — the good, the bad, the problems.  We hope to provide a detailed post this month with links to the issue as we did on the ACC Docket series on document review (click here).

7.    But on the bright side for DC and NYC (and London and Brussels) is that the increase in economic tensions/issues and the increase in high-profile scandals has lead to a rise in government data requests, compliance audits and investigations from both a state and federal level.  We have chronicled, among other investigations: the DOJ investigation of DTCC in the credit default swap probe; the EU target investigations of the energy, tech, and drug markets (the EU has stepped up antitrust enforcement in the technology, energy, drug and transportation sectors); the LCD makers cartel investigation and the DOJ review of the telecom industry.

8.   Foreign language projects still rule the roost with the FCPA and IP litigation cases dominating, and they are all over the market: DC, LA, NYC, Philly, the South, and West.  Europe postings have also increased.  We have posted 21 foreign language projects in the last 3 weeks.   Many are part of the rising number of FCPA follow-on civil lawsuits, projects we also track through Kevin LaCroix’s site (cited above).

9.    Lastly, in answer to your many questions, our job listings have expanded because our membership includes a great number of EDD vendors, in-house legal departments, and other entities who have posted projects and positions that benefit from a legal background.  In the last few weeks we have posted a number of project management and client services positions (not responsible for generating revenue) where the vendor has sought a contract attorney to manage a project (legal and non-legal) and handle the inevitable issues that arise, or, for instance, manage the contract administration function.  These have been with law firms, litigation support providers, corporate legal departments and corporate finance departments.

Some housekeeping:

a.  To subscribe to our job lists go here:  http://theposselist.com/mailman/listinfo   The master Posse List (called “Distribution” on that link) normally posts only articles of interest, trend reports, webinars/webcasts, etc.  If a project/position is national in scope or permits telecommuting then we will post on the “Distribution” list.

b.  starting this week, foreign language projects will post ONLY to the master foreign language listserv and the respective language listserv and will not post to the respective city/region listserv.  To subscribe to the Master Foreign Language listserv go here:  http://theposselist.com/mailman/listinfo/foreignlang_theposselist.com

We are still building out the individual language listservs.  So far we have:

Arabic

Chinese

Dutch

French

German

Greek

Hindi.Punjabi

Japanese

Portuguese

Spanish. 

We will be adding more and if you are on the Master Foreign Language list you will be notified what languages have been added.

Now, on to ILTA.   There have been some good blog posts (besides our own) which summarized the conference and we have them below.  But a few points from the conference that affect contract attorneys:

1.   Our  favorite “mantra” which we heard continually: greater use of contract attorneys by corporations, a trend we reported on earlier this year (click here) and recently confirmed by the Sapire Search Group (click here) and which Rees Morrison has covered numerous times on his blog (click here).  It has been reflected in our job postings.

     Note:  this is a topic area at the ACC annual meeting in October (http://am.acc.com) which we will be covering so we’ll have more to report.

2.   The march of EDD vendors into document review continues, the accelerating trend of corporations by-passing law firms and going directly to vendors.  Many EDD vendors are trying to move more into the “right side” of the EDRM as EMC has done (click here).  

3.   More important to the EDD vendors success is the continuing move of EDD directly into corporations and the (incessant) mantra of “early case assessment early case assessment early case assessment …” which is critical, of course, to the corporate client.  It’s the EDD vendors that can do this, not the regular staffing agencies, although many staffing agencies have paired up with EDD vendors to provide A-to-Z service (for example The Dine Group and Huron Consulting).  The reason is obvious:  the better you assess and plan, the lower the volume of data to review – and review is the biggest cost in the entire process.   Companies are desperate to save a buck or two, so they’ll be more likely to secure more ownership over the e-discovery process to enhance control and reduce costs.  Leveraging in-house technologies, internal legal teams will deploy early case assessment methodologies and data reduction strategies.

4.   And there is the Europe-Asia factor.  As litigation and arbitration cases are increasingly becoming global in nature, and data may come from a variety of countries, there is a mixture of legislative jurisdictions involved as well as a myriad of languages and cultures – including vast differences in the maturity of attitudes towards e-discovery.   With cross-border cases ever more frequent, the process of disclosure grows more complex. Documents created in any country and any language can be, and increasingly are, relevant to lawsuits, investigations or regulatory matters. 

     Note:  Much of the European work has been captured by EDD vendors and agencies with “boots on the ground” in Europe such as Hudson Legal London, Merrill Brink, Trilantic, and Outindex.  Much of this is attributable to the use of blocking statutes and the impact of European privacy laws which we have chronicled on our Europe page (click here). 

5.       Which is why … taking points 2, 3 and 4 above … you have the one-stop-shop-solution that corporations have been seeking and why companies like Catalyst Respository Systems,  eMag Solutions, EMC, eTERA Consulting,  FTI Consulting, Huron Consulting, and Merrill Brink have made such inroads.

6.   But “The Big Enchilada” discussed was Federal government contract work.  There is a flood of work from the FDIC, SEC, Treasury, etc. …  standard financial document review/processing contracts … hitting the FBO (see our background post by clicking here).

Many staffing agencies bid on and get these contracts (for example Pat Taylor and Associates in D.C. which is GSA qualified and has placed many contract attorneys on Federal projects).  But the EDD vendors are looking for the the large dollar projects such as, for example, Mega 3 contracts (competitively awarded contracts with the DOJ) that are for providing information technology and automated litigation support services to wide range of Federal government agencies.  These contracts go into the millions of dollars.  Scores of EDD vendors (and a growing number of regular staffing agencies) are now GSA Schedule qualified and bid on these contracts and many are setting up special teams for these projects which include contract attorneys.   We have posted a large number on our job lists.

7.   Another growth area:  the use of contract attorneys in the area of governance, risk and compliance (GRC) markets.  This is not a “new new thing” and has been chronicled for the last year and half (see for example here) but it was given heavy emphasis at ILTA.  There will be/has been a convergence of e-discovery and GRC technology and management and it is reshaping the industry.  Many contract attorneys are employed in these markets already.  Given the rate of technology shown at ILTA, and discussions we had with vendors, most e-discovery and GRC solutions will be cloud based in 10 years and corporations are moving toward solutions. 

In the U.S. and Europe one of the big combinations covering this area is eDiscovery Solutions Group, a major player in the GRC market, and Trilantic, a leading European-based e-discovery company.  See their recent press release here.  Another significant player is Fios Inc.

    Note:  we’ll discuss the GRC area is area in more detail in the coming weeks, most likely after the Association of Corporate Counsel annual meeting in Boston which we have been invited to attend.  The areas of governance, risk and compliance are major topics at this year’s event.

NOTE:   any and all projects or positions that we have received relating to points 1 through 7 immediately above have been posted and will continue to be posted to the appropriate Posse List job listserv.  In answer to your questions, there is no one geographic area where these jobs are.  We have posted them all over.  And there are scores of companies staffing in all of these areas.  We have only mentioned ones we interviewed at ILTA or in our D.C. office.

Now, for some good coverage/analysis of ILTA we recommend:

—  Chris Dale blog Edisclosure Information Project which you can access here and here.      

—  Ron Friedmann’s blog Prism Legal whch you can access here.

—  The ILTA/InsideLegal.com Technology Purchasing Survey which you can access here

—   The Above and Beyond KM blog which you can access here

Many of these topics deserve further discussion and analysis and we will attempt that in the coming weeks. 

And rather than bombard you daily with posts and articles about e-discovery and/or the contract attorney market, check our Twitter feed (top of the right hand column) or if you have a Twitter account follow us here:  www.twitter.com/PosseList

New York Posse List Members: 

• * Interested in helping underserved New Yorkers who cannot afford legal representation?
• * Want to maintain and improve your skills and acquire new skills?
• * Need Free CLE credit?

There are many reasons for contract attorneys to do pro bono and there are many pro bono opportunities in New York. Clearly there is a serious need for pro bono legal services in New York. In a recent report, the Office of NY’s Deputy Chief Administrative Judge for Justice Initiatives stated that the supply of publicly funded legal aid and pro bono services is “entirely inadequate” to meet the need. In addition to the obvious need, pro bono work is also a great opportunity for contract attorneys to maintain and improve their skills & acquire new skills, work directly with clients, network and get free CLE credit.  (CLE credit is available for pro bono work in NY State).

This email highlights pro bono resources, as well as opportunities that may be well-suited for contract attorneys who have time off between projects or otherwise (some pro bono work may not be appropriate because of time-commitment, requirements of particular pro bono legal service providers).

Note that patience is required for finding the right pro bono opportunity.  The need is great but some legal services organizations that put together pro bono work are understaffed in their pro bono programs and swamped with volunteers because of the state of the economy.  Persistent matters and the right opportunity will happen!  

(1)  PROBONO.NET‘S NYC PRO BONO CENTER

http://www.probono.net/ny/nyc/

The NYC Pro Bono Center is an excellent resource.  Attorneys can learn about pro bono opportunities by practice area as well as different legal service providers, review the calendar of pro bono trainings and lectures (many involve free CLE credit), sign up for webinar series and more.  

Check their calendar for daily trainings, lectures and other pro bono opportunities. 

(2) VOLUNTEER LAWYER FOR THE DAY PROJECT IN HOUSING COURT

http://www.courts.state.ny.us/courts/nyc/housing/vlfd_hsg_prospectiveattys.shtml

Over 90% of housing court litigants go without representation.  The Civil Court of the City of New York and the New York City Bar Association operate the Volunteer Lawyer for the Day (VLFD) Project, which is designed to assist self-represented tenants and landlords appearing in nonpayment cases in housing court. This is a great opportunity for contract attorneys to help New Yorkers — especially for those attorneys who would like courtroom experience and to keep their skills sharp. The representation begins and ends the same day. There are no client calls, filing deadlines, motion practice or responsibilities beyond the allotted day, which is scheduled in advance at your convenience.

You can earn free CLE credits for your service.

(3) NEW YORK COURTS NEW PROGRAM FOR VOLUNTEER ATTORNEYS

 http://www.courts.state.ny.us/attorneys/volunteer.shtml

 “Economy Prompts NY Courts New Program for Volunteer Attorneys”  

This is a brief advice program that was created for the New York courts to enlist attorneys, many of whom have been laid off or on reduced work schedules because of the economy.  Notably, there is no minimum time commitment. Lawyers can volunteer “just a few hours a week or as frequently as every day on a schedule convenient for the attorney,” according to the program application. According to the website, under the supervision of court staff, volunteer attorneys spend full days or parts of days in a courthouse, and are available to provide legal advice and assistance to self-represented litigants in:

- answering questions and inquiries

- completing petitions and other court forms

- preparing for court hearings

-  interpreting court orders

Many of the cases are a result of the bad economy, such as foreclosures, tenant-landlord disputes, personal debt, child support and other matters in Family Court and small estate settlements in Surrogate’s Court. Applications and other information about the program are available on the link above. Free training will be available, and attorneys will earn CLE credit for volunteering under the program.

(4) CONSUMER DEBT CLINIC SPONSORED BY BROOKLYN BAR ASSOCIATION (CLARO – CIVIL LEGAL ADVICE AND RESOURCE OFFICE)  http://www.brooklynbar.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18&Itemid=38

This is an innovative advice project for pro se debtors sued by creditors in Kings County Civil Court. The Brooklyn Bar did a webinar about the program, which can be viewed here: http://www.probono.net/ny/nyc/webinar/.  Assistance is offered by pro bono attorneys to pro se debtors every Thursday from 2:30-4:30 and 6:00-8:00 p.m. at the Kings County Civil Court in downtown Brooklyn, so a lawyer’s commitment is limited in time. The webinar also discusses other pro bono projects run by the Brooklyn Bar Association’s Volunteer Lawyers Project.

Corporate legal departments are keeping more work in-house these days to reduce costs.   For many, this means more work and fewer people to do it. To that end, many companies are taking advantage of the high quality of talent on the market now by increasing the use of contract attorneys.

While using outside counsel is still a necessity for certain highly specialized work, many corporate law departments are re-evaluating and increasing the work can be done internally.   Often, that work consists of routine matters, such as patent applications, document reviews, low-level litigation and contract administration. However, as law departments lean more heavily on temporary legal professionals, the project work is not always routine.   With increased federal regulation, more companies are turning to contract attorneys to handle large projects, such as corporate investigations and transactional due diligence.    When the project is completed, the contract lawyers are released.

For the full article from the Sapire Search Group click here.

Merck & Co. agreed to buy rival U.S. drugmaker Schering-Plough Corp. for $41.1 billion in cash and stock to get a larger experimental pipeline and products unhindered by imminent patent losses.

Schering-Plough holders will get $23.61 a share, a 34 percent premium to the closing stock price last week, the companies said in a Business Wire statement. Shares of Kenilworth, New Jersey-based Schering-Plough rose the most in a month in New York trading on March 6 on speculation of a bid from Merck or Johnson & Johnson.

“It clearly is a year of mergers for pharmaceutical companies,” said Philippe Lanone, an analyst at Natixis Securities in Paris, in a telephone interview. “They don’t have much of a choice if they are to guarantee EPS growth in the years to come.”

An intense DOJ review is expected.  Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP acted as legal advisor to Merck.  Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz acted as legal advisor to Schering-Plough.

For the full press release which details the transaction click here.

The deal comes on the heels of the New York State and Congressional investigations of Merck and Schering-Plough over Vytorin, a high cholesterol medication, in which the companies are accused of hiding test results on the drug.  For details click here and click here.

If the Obama administration does move in that direction it is expected the FDIC will be looking for former RTC contract managers (of which there are scores among Posse List members) and/or those with skill sets involving loan analysis and managing pending bank closures and interventions.

Keep an eye on the FDIC employment page (click here) and the FBO website which posts Federal government contracts (click here).  In addition, there are a number of D.C. and NYC staffing agencies that have done work for the FDIC and OTS so they get first crack at any projects requiring a staff up of attorneys and financial analysts.

We’ll leave to the political blogs and pundits whether the stimulus package will have the necessary transformative affect on the economy.

More importantly for contract attorneys is that this will afford a stream of work through various government contracting companies (including several contract attorney staffing agencies) that have been staffing and will continue to staff projects requiring temporary legal work.  This is work well beyond TARP related and credit crisis work.

But we’ve seen an emormous increase in such postings on the FBO (Federal Business Opportunity) website and on the multitude of agency websites soliciting vendors.  We have been posting more and more of these jobs on the various Posse List listservs.  For a full list of our job listservs click here.

And we have seen a surge in government contracting companies who have been subscribing to our lists, and asking us for specialized contract attorneys.  We have been contacting these companies for more information.

From formation through administration, contracting with the federal government is a highly regulated process.  Posse List staff will be attending the various Federal contracting workshops in D.C. and around the country that will start in February and March.  These workshops explain the method or process an agency must use to solicit a contract, how the agency negotiates or awards a contract; etc. 

In the meantime we’ll continue to collect and post information on federal government work and jobs.  For all articles and information we have so far click here.

Chip companies are turning to armies of patent lawyers to bolster revenue amid the worst market for semiconductors since 2001.

Qimonda AG, LSI Corp and Spansion Inc. are among the chip companies using the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington to try and block imports of rival products or garner patent royalties. The government agency has started investigating 42 intellectual-property complaints this year, the most since 1983.

“Lawyers are expensive, particularly patent lawyers in Silicon Valley, but it’s a great area to get money,” said Hans Mosesmann, a semiconductor analyst for Raymond James & Associates in New York. “You’re going to see more litigation and more aggressive maneuvering.”

Chipmakers, already reeling from plunging prices caused by overproduction, now face falling demand. Chip sales slid 4.4 percent this year, and will slump 16 percent in 2009, the first back-to-back decline on record, according to research firm Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Connecticut.

For full article click here.

The full press release click here.

We do not know if this means the firm will be bringing on temporary attorneys but that has been the pattern in the past.  We do not have a contact at Thacher but we know that Posse List members have worked at the
firm.