Do we smell doc review projects a-comin’ … or perhaps it’s just the stench of petroleum?

Oil, oil, oil, oil ….

As has been reported in the Wall Street Journal, Lawyer Weekly and various other sources, companies that potentially face civil or criminal liability for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill have hired a large cast of outside legal help, including former high-level government attorneys and a top product-liability lawyer.  BP has tapped former U.S. deputy attorneys general Jamie Gorelick and Mark Filip to represent the oil company before Congress and the Justice Department, respectively.  Transocean Ltd. has retained John Beisner of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, who represented Ford Motor Co. in litigation involving Explorer sport-utility vehicles and exploding Firestone tires.  He also helped Merck & Co. in litigation over its prescription pain killer, Vioxx.

Legal bills for BP, Transocean, contractor Halliburton Co. and others are mounting as the companies navigate the preliminary stages of a Justice Department criminal inquiry as well as myriad suits filed by fishermen, shrimpers and others who say their livelihoods have been harmed by the spill. 

Gorelick, who now is at WilmerHale, worked at Justice during the Clinton administration and also is a former general counsel for the Defense Department.  She has represented BP before Congress in recent years and will do so now as the company faces a thicket of regulatory and congressional hearings. 

Filip worked at Justice under Bush II.  He and Richard Godfrey, both partners at Kirkland & Ellis, will represent BP in matters concerning the Justice Department as well as the U.S. Marine Board of Investigations. 

Thomas Milch at Arnold & Porter is representing BP on environmental issues. 

Transocean’s team includes Ned Kohnke and Edwin Preis Jr. of Preis & Roy PLC in New Orleans, Ivan Schlager of Skadden and David Wochner and Rachel Clingman of Sutherland Asbill & Brennan. 

There has also been an oil slick of articles concerning the various e-discovery issues such as this one from LegalWeek.com (click here to download)  which quotes some of the major players in e-discovery:  Jim Wagner (CEO of DiscoverReady), Laura Kibbe (senior vice president of document review services at Epiq Systems), Craig Carpenter (general counsel of Recommind), Wendy Curtis (chair of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe’s e-discovery Working Group), Amor Esteban (a partner at Shook Hardy & Bacon with expertise in e-discovery and data management), and Sanjay Bhandari (partner at Ernst & Young in London).  

Plus the talk that BP is a take-over candidate (click here).   

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, a private consultant for energy companies told Congress that any effort to rewrite oil spill liability laws retroactively would likely face a legal challenge based on breach-of-contract claims.  If  successful, those breach-of-contract claims could cost the federal government billions of dollars in payments to the oil and gas industry.  The Senate Judiciary Committee is considering legislation to lift limits on damage awards.   For the full story from law.com click here.

Data/document collection has begun in the U.S., and in Europe.  Several sites are tracking all of this litigation and we will keep you posted.  It appears the litigation may be situated in Houston (click here) although a few law firms we spoke with said the doc reviews will be across the U.S.  Given the law firms mentioned in the first paragraph of this post (Skadden, WilmerHale, A&P) we can assume (granted, assumptions are always dangerous in doc review predictions) that D.C. will get a good chunk of the work since these firms use D.C. doc review centers for most of their work. 

And let’s not for get all that subprime/financial crisis litigation 

And on top of The Oil Follies we have all the financial litigation we have previously chronicled: the increase in U.S. government data requests from the DOJ and the SEC, compliance audits and investigations at both the state and federal level, hundreds of private litigations, etc.  Most of this work has been in DC with a chunk in NYC.  In fact the DC agencies have been screaming for bodies with the busiest agencies being  Compliance, Hudson Legal, Kelly Law Registry, Legal Assets, Legal Placements, and Pat Taylor.  You can find their contact email by clicking here.   

Over in Europe we have seen the launch of the first large doc reviews involving European banks and financial institutions (projects in Brussels, Geneva, London, Luxembourg, Munich) with more to come. 

Oh, yes.  There are 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, etc. 

And the continuing surge in foreign language document review projects 

As we have indicated in numerous posts over the last year, foreign language document reviews have dominated the U.S. contract attorney market due to the continuing increase in FCPA cases and IP litigation.  It has provided a steady stream of work from firms such as A&P, Baker & McKenzie, Finnegan Henderson, Kirkland & Ellis, WilmerHale, etc. who have strong FCPA practices, and IP practices. 

For some of our new members, FCPA doc review work in a nutshell:

▪  Foreign language document reviews made up 78% of Posse List postings last year, and over 40% of those were FCPA related.   And we use the term FCPA broadly because it isn’t only FCPA violations per se.   These cases include money laundering, wire fraud, antitrust laws, private party civil litigations, etc.   

▪  As we have previously reported, the DOJ brought a record 26 actions in 2009; the SEC brought another 14, its second-most ever. The DOJ cases included prosecutions of 44 individuals—a huge surge from just nine in 2008, 10 in 2007, and six in 2006.  There are 130+ cases on track in 2010. 

▪    In Europe we have seen a surge in multi-jurisdiction prosecutions with co-operations between countries.  And we have seen increased industry and sector-wide investigations which has cross-border implications. 

In the U.S., that flood of requests for CJK (Chinese Japanese Korean) fluent attorneys (especially Japanese) on our various job lists is due not only to the Toyota litigations but also the continuing increase in IP cases and “case specific” investigations such as the one resulting from the FBI raids in various Michigan locations of Japanese suppliers. 

We have 1,800 Posse List members on the CJK lists (attorneys and paralegals) and based our market research and feedback from Posse List members there are 15-20 CJK projects in the major CJK document review markets:  Boston, Chicago, Detroit, DC, LA, NYC, and San Francisco.  

Note: the highest paying agency for Japanese fluent contract attorneys with a continuing demand in DC, NYC and elsewhere: Merrill Brink.  They are paying $63 an hour plus OT.  They also offer a signing bonus and completion bonus.  They also have a need for other languages.  Contact: Vanessa.Vidunas@merrillcorp.com 

And there is boatload (iPad load?) of litigation brewing involving Google, Apple and some other high-tech stalwarts.  We have attended several telecom/media conference in the U.S. and Europe and we’ll post more on that in a later edition.