The Manchester office of law firm Irwin Mitchell has announced the appointment of leading employment partner Alan Lewis.

Moving from Freeths where he was head of the employment department in Manchester, Alan brings with him over 20 years of legal experience having been Partner at other firms in the region including Brabners and George Davies (now Mills & Reeve).

Alan, who in his new role will lead Irwin Mitchell’s employment team in Manchester, advises large corporates and senior executives on a wide range of employment issues ranging from TUPE, organisational restructuring, tribunal disputes, settlement agreements and restrictive covenant breaches.

He joins Irwin Mitchell’s 70 strong established employment practice which is headed up nationally by partner, Fergal Dowling.

Commenting in his appointment at Irwin Mitchell, Alan said: “This is an exciting opportunity and I am looking forward to joining an ambitious firm and helping it to expand its business team here in Manchester.”

Roy Beckett, Regional Managing Partner at Irwin Mitchell in Manchester, said: “Alan is another important appointment for Irwin Mitchell’s Manchester office and adds considerable expertise and experience to our legal offering across the region.

“He is an accomplished employment law partner and I have no doubt that his strong leadership and client care skills will be an asset not just here in Manchester but to the wider firm.”

Alan’s appointment follows the recruitment by Irwin Mitchell in Manchester of commercial litigation partner, Duncan Hope and DWF’S North West Head of Pensions, Andrew Ashley Taylor.

Latham & Watkins has announced that Hui Xu has joined the firm’s Shanghai office as a partner in the Litigation & Trial Department.

Xu’s practice focuses on advising clients on complex, cross border government investigations and litigation matters in Asia. He has deep experience conducting complex internal investigations involving the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and Chinese bribery laws, advising clients on matters before the US Department of Justice and China SAIC regulators, performing compliance due diligence for high-profile transactions and presenting bilingual training for senior executives and management teams on compliance with the FCPA and Chinese bribery laws.

Xu has also advised on Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (“CFIUS”) reviews, international trade—including anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations and WTO disputes—Section 337 investigations, and antitrust matters. He has a wealth of experience and deep knowledge representing Chinese companies and Chinese government agencies in US regulatory compliance matters and litigation across a number of industry sectors including pharmaceutical, life sciences, manufacturing and retail.

Rowland Cheng, Office Managing Partner of Shanghai, said: “Hui is a highly regarded practitioner in his field and we are delighted that he has joined us in China. He has a distinguished track record advising companies, boards and executives on a wide range of ‘big ticket’ litigation. He is calm, thoughtful and tough in hotly-contested matters, and he will add important capabilities to our Corporate and Government Investigations capabilities in the region.”

International technology, media and telecoms law firm Olswang recently announced that it has expanded its offering in the AsiaPacific region to include Korea with the addition of consultant Steve Kim to lead business development and client support services locally.

With Steve’s arrival and his extensive experience in the Korean market, the firm aims to increase the opportunities to generate and service clients in its key sectors and to enhance support to existing clients in Korea. He will focus on developing the firm’s profile within the country’s established and bourgeoning technology sector with a particular emphasis on Korean companies seeking crossborder transactional, commercial, intellectual property and litigious advice.

Steve, a US-trained lawyer, brings an ideal mix of legal know-how, Korean market insight and business development experience, having previously held positions in Korea as senior legal counsel at Samsung and head of sales and marketing at CPA Global. He also previously served as director of the International Centre for Dispute Resolution of the American Arbitration Association (New York, US).

Based in Seoul, Korea, Steve will work closely with Olswang Asia in Singapore as well as law firms Olswang Asia has associations with across the region, including Singapore legal practice Holborn Law LLC and independent Hong Kong law firm Haldanes. Steve will also support Olswang’s global IP and dispute resolution teams working with a selected team of European partners. Steve will not practice law or give legal advice directly to clients and will be responsible for managing and cultivating the relationships Olswang Asia has with its respected partner firms in Korea.

Hodge Jones & Allen has recently appointed John Hartley and Graeme Hydari as partners to its 31-strong criminal defence team.

John joins as head of financial crime from London firm Mackrell Turner Garrett, where he led the corporate crime and regulatory department, prior to this John worked with Malletts in Holborn.

Having been called to the Bar before qualifying as a solicitor, John has built up a strong corporate fraud practice having defended numerous Serious Fraud Office, HMRC, Financial Conduct Authority, Department of Business Innovation & Skills and Crown Prosecution Service cases. He also regularly advises clients subject to proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Among his most notable recent cases, John has successfully defended a client involved in a £100m ‘boiler-room’ fraud and succeeded in obtaining a judicial review of a search and seize warrant by the Serious Fraud Office targeted at the same client. He also acted in a £14m mortgage fraud case, which followed a BBC Panorama investigation into corruption regarding a block of flats in south east London, in which all defendants were acquitted following a 10-week trial.

Graeme Hydari has been promoted to partner having worked as a consultant with the firm for the past five years. A well-known court advocate, Graeme specialises in defending suspects charged with murder, grievous bodily harm, drug supplying, serious sexual offences, internet pornography, complex financial fraud and inner city gang-related offences. He has considerable experience of representing people with drug or alcohol addictions, mental health conditions, learning disabilities and special education needs.

Winston & Strawn LLP recently announced that Matthew Bate has joined the firm as a partner in its International Arbitration Practice in London. Mr. Bate, who comes to Winston from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, advises and represents parties in relation to international commercial arbitrations, as well as investment treaty arbitrations.

“With the addition of Matthew Bate to the team, we continue to focus on strategically growing our capabilities within key practice areas and markets,” said Tom Fitzgerald, Winston’s firmwide managing partner. “We are excited by the momentum and growth the firm’s International Arbitration Practice and London office have experienced recently.”

Michael Stepek will also be joining the firm as a partner in its International Arbitration Practice in London. Mr. Stepek, who focuses on international commercial arbitration and investment treaty arbitration, comes to Winston from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.

Renowned as a top-tier practitioner by leading legal directories, Mr. Stepek concentrates his practice in complex, high-value disputes involving foreign direct investment, major infrastructure projects, and joint ventures in the energy, mining, telecommunications, and transportation industries.

“Michael has established himself among the most distinguished practitioners in the field. His global perspective and experience in energy and infrastructure projects brings a desirable dimension that few can match,” commented Steve D’Amore, co-chair of Winston’s Litigation Department.

Workplaces in the UK are amongst the safest in the world. Figures published by the HSE in 2016 reveal that the UK had the lowest fatality rate per 100,000 employees of all EU member states bar the Netherlands.

Health and Safety regulations, many of which have been inherited from the EU, have contributed to a general downward trend in the numbers of workplace accidents over the last 20 years.

Ensuring compliance with an ever-increasing burden of health and safety law is particularly onerous for SME’s, however, whose obligations are no different from larger and better resourced organisations.

Whether a company is fully prepared and compliant or not, contending with the reality of an accident at work can be a shock for any employer. Aside from the emotional fallout, an employer is also expected to think and act clearly, in the best interests of all parties involved and, above all, in the best interests of the injured employee.

The following are 5 key steps to take if you find yourself, as an employer, managing the aftermath of a workplace accident.

Step 1 - Ensure the injured employee gets immediate help

An employer’s immediate concern should be the welfare of the injured individual/s. Ensuring that first aid procedures are followed is critical. If appropriate, an ambulance should be called.

If the accident does not warrant a 999 call, the employer should still insist that injured workers attend a medical check-up without delay. The employer will never be criticised for going over and above what may be required. In some circumstances, such as a head injury that results in delayed concussion, the cautious approach has saved lives.

Step 2 - Ensure there is no danger to others

Checking that the accident circumstances present no immediate danger to other staff or to members of the public should happen alongside, or as soon as possible after, the injured party is getting first aid.

Where possible, the danger area should be cleared of all personnel until it can be made safe. Signs should be erected to warn of any hazards.

All relevant details of the incident should be promptly recorded in the company’s accident book, to ensure the account is as full and as accurate as possible.

Step 3 - Review workplace safety

A risk assessment and a review of what caused the accident should both be carried out as soon as is reasonably possible.

Employers must now comply with RIDDOR (Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013) to avoid serious breaches of health and safety law.

The injured employee should be interviewed, if and when they feel able to participate. Witness statements should also be collated.

Staff should be encouraged to be open and honest about the circumstances of the accident, so that failings in the design or execution of work tasks and protocols can be identified. These findings can then form the basis of training and retraining where necessary.

Employees should also be encouraged to give input on what could be done to make their working environment safer.

Working practices should be inspected and machine safety should be reviewed generally. If the accident resulted from inadequate protective equipment then this should be rectified, on a firm wide basis if appropriate. If equipment was being used incorrectly, training methods should be reviewed.

Any defective equipment that contributed to the accident should be repaired or replaced.

A training manual for new employees and other relevant documentation should be updated to reflect the outcomes of the above.

Step 4 - Communicate

After the dust has settled, the employer should ensure that they offer as much support as the employee needs. It may be necessary to allow the employee time off to recover and to attend medical treatment and physio.

A seriously injured employee may be unable to work for a protracted, or even indefinite period. With reference to legal and HR advice, the employer is well advised to maintain a proactive and ongoing dialogue with their employee in these circumstances. It may well be that the employee decides to make a claim, or simply has no alternative but to pursue financial compensation for a work accident.

Employers should not bury their heads hoping that a claim doesn’t happen. The stress created by “not knowing” can be very damaging to a small business, and it is far better for the employer to be part of the solution.

Chris Salmon, Operations Director at Quittance Personal Injury, said “Maintaining a positive and constructive dialogue with an employee following an accident probably won’t prevent the employee from claiming compensation. However it may stop the process becoming contentious, or as contentious, if the employer has made best endeavours to support the claimant. We would recommend that employers consult with their insurer, legal and HR representatives as soon as possible after the accident for additional guidance”.

Step 5 - Manage PR situation

In addition to the employer's obligations to the injured employee, the employer also has a responsibility to ensure that business disruption is minimised.

A poorly-managed accident at work has the potential to be a PR disaster for a growing business. Employees may also be jittery about the general safety of the company’s working environment in the aftermath of an accident. It is important to act fast to prevent an internal or external counter-narrative developing.

The employer must work quickly to rectify, and be seen to rectify, the issues that led to the accident. Employees should be kept informed regarding the accident circumstances and what the company has done to positively address the situation. Staff should also be given a forum to discuss questions and concerns, where appropriate.

Depending on the nature and severity of the accident, a company’s reputation can be at stake. It is often a company’s failure to address a situation, rather than the situation itself, that causes long-term brand damage in the eyes of the public.

In summary, health and safety law presents companies with a significant number of regulations with which they must comply. With the regulations come much clearer protocols that have helped make the UK workplace one of the safest in the world. Should the worst happen, these regulations provide clear protocols that help companies manage an accident situation in the best possible way.

(Source: Quittance)

Law firms are increasingly concerned that the current slowdown in M&A activity will damage their profitability, reveals new research by Thomson Reuters Legal business, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals.

According to the ninth annual research survey by Thomson Reuters Legal business, nearly a quarter (24%) of the Finance Directors (FDs) of the UK’s Top 100 law firms fear that weakness in M&A work is now a major risk to profitability, up from 8% last year.

The survey results reflect a trend seen elsewhere by Thomson Reuters. Global M&A activity was 18% lower in the first quarter of 2016 than in the same period the prior year*.

Headwinds caused by Brexit may now further dent business confidence already hit by the continued oil price slump and on-going concerns over the slowing economy in China.

The UK IPO market has also seen a slowdown in activity, with the number of IPOs on the London Stock Exchange falling from 137 in 2014 to 92 in 2015, according to PwC**.

Thomson Reuters points out that a decline in M&A activity is particularly significant for law firm revenues as this work tends to feed instructions in other areas such as employment, competition and tax.

“The buoyancy in M&A transaction volumes last year was a key driver of profitability for law firms, but further growth was in question even before the Brexit vote and will be even more so now,” says Samantha Steer, Director, Large Law Segment for Thomson Reuters UK&I Legal business.

“M&A transactions are a vital source of work for law firms, both in themselves and because they generate a significant amount of workflow across a range of other practice areas. If fears that corporate finance activity is weakening are realised that could rattle the sector.”

Law firm FDs predict that technology will be one of the fastest-growing sectors in 2016, with 28% of respondents foreseeing a rapid growth in work from this sector.

“The technology industry in particular has seen massive investment in recent years which has propelled growth in the UK and we expect this trend to continue into the long-term.

“London-based fintech start-ups have seen high levels of private equity investment flooding in which has helped to stimulate corporate activity whilst also cementing the city’s position as a leading fintech hub,” says Steer.

A sharp jump in demand for regulatory and compliance work is also expected this year, with 48% anticipating fast growth – compared to 28% last year and 18% in 2010.

Top 100 FDs predict that the mining sector will be among the sectors seeing contraction in 2016.

“The slump in commodity prices caused by a glut in world supply of metals and a slowdown in China has created an environment where 80% of FDs expect work from the mining sector to stagnate or contract in 2016 – the highest proportion of any area of work,” says Steer.

The prolonged low oil price has caused some Top 100 FDs to predict a shrinkage in energy work this year with 12% forecasting a contraction in workflow – up from 4% last year.

The study found that downward pressure on fees remains the biggest threat to the profitability of law firms, as it has since the recession, with around three quarters (72%) seeing this as high risk – up from 60% in 2010.

Cost over-runs on fixed fee work is the next biggest concern, with 40% citing this as a high risk
to profitability.

“Although firms have become much better at pricing their quotes for work on a fixed fee, finance departments are still wary about potential cost over-runs,” said Samantha Steer.

However, concerns about late payments by clients has receded markedly since the recession as law firms get tougher about chasing payments. Now, only 12% of FDs rate this as a high risk to profitability, down from 27% in 2010.

The survey, entitled Threats to Profitability and Opportunities for Growth: A Survey Amongst the UK’s Top 100 Law Firms, is carried out annually by Thomson Reuters to determine issues facing the industry and to provide valuable insight into law firms’ outlooks and strategies. Research is conducted amongst Finance Directors at 25 of the UK’s Top 100 law firms including Magic Circle and Silver Circle firms.

* Thomson Reuters Mergers & Acquisitions Review First Quarter 2016

**PwC IPO Watch

(Source: Thomson Reuters)

New research has revealed just how few young people believe a career in law will offer them a good work/life balance, sparking fears about recruiting the next generation of lawyers.

Only 18% of those between 18-24 years think the sector would provide a positive work/life balance. Similarly, only 20% of 25-34 year olds believe a legal career would satisfy this requirement, the study by ComRes has found.

This draws a stark contrast with the older generation with more than half of over 65s believing that a career in the industry would offer a good work/life balance, highlighting a significant generational gap when it comes to how careers in law are viewed.

The study was commissioned by coffee company Keurig, who provide coffee machines to legal firms across the UK. Stephen Stagg, UK Managing Director for Keurig, commented:

“As a coffee company supplying the legal sector, we know first-hand that lawyers have demanding schedules and can work long hours. Because of that, we’ve seen real efforts from firms to make the workplace a nicer environment for those in the profession. Whether it’s luxury coffee machines, mindfulness zones, or on-site hairdressers, firms are definitely doing more to ensure a happy working environment for their employees.”

Clayton Miller, of London based KMJ Solicitors, believes pop-culture has glamorized law careers for the younger generation, meaning they’re not prepared for the hard work that comes with it:

“Some young people are disillusioned by the reality of working in a law firm – long hours, relatively low pay at the beginning compared to their banker buddies, and being made to do the most mundane tasks, all of which are a million miles away from what is portrayed in US law firm soaps. Being a successful lawyer, like being a success in any job, is hard work. But without a personal life balance, the whole thing will eventually come crashing down. A “work only” imbalance is not sustainable long term, no matter which generation.”

In recent research by legal recruitment specialists Douglas Scott, they found only 1% of lawyers aged 30 and below were able to work from home, with just 11% able to work flexible hours.

Jonathan Nolan, Director at Douglas Scott, added:

“A career in the law often can’t offer the flexible working benefits we’re starting to see in many other workplace cultures. This is particularly true for those in the early years of their law career, with over 55s tending to have more freedom over their working hours than their younger colleagues.”

ComRes interviewed 2,035 British adults online between 31st August and 1st September 2016. They were asked to respond to the questions of “Generally, how trustworthy or untrustworthy do you think each of the following sources of information are?” in relation to a range of information outlets. Data were weighted by age, gender and region to be representative of all British adults. Full data tables are available at www.comresglobal.com

(Source: ComRes Global)

Also, keep an eye out over the next month, as Lawyer Monthly will be running a competition to win a Keurig coffee machine and pods for your business!

Evidence from the Hillsborough disaster was originally only in the form of tatty notebooks and water impaired folders, until a series of floppy disks came to light and critical documents were found. Further to this, film and photographic evidence has also been recovered aiding the resolution of the case. Evidence is crucial in all cases, but sourcing and physically recovering is not as simple as it sounds.

The challenge is that data that is likely to be of most interest to investigators in a historic case in particular is likely to be stored in an old or even obsolete format. We may have stopped using the once ubiquitous 3.5-inch or even 5.25-inch floppy discs long ago, but as our investigations often demonstrate, that doesn’t mean that organisations have got rid of their old media altogether.

While best practice dictates that data is transferred from old storage formats onto back-up tapes or, increasingly, the cloud, in our experience old floppy drives never die, they just get put into boxes in a cupboard or an off-site facility.

Finding the disks as part of an ongoing investigation is one thing, but identifying the information on them is quite another. As technology is refreshed and updated within an organisation, the means of reading old file formats disappears. Just as many a household has a box full of videocassettes or LP records stored in the loft but nothing to play them on, so plenty of corporate organisations retain disks and tapes that can no longer be read by their IT equipment.

The answer may be to source an old machine from the same era and hope they are both compatible. However, you have no idea what is going to happen or whether you will be able to extract the relevant files. From an exterior perspective the machine may look in working condition, but hidden failure or damage internally may be working against you and prevent any data from being found.

Tracing the author or editor of a document can be equally challenging. A Microsoft Word document, for example, may have multiple date and time stamps included within it, having been invoked whenever a document is drafted, saved, amended printed or shared.

Tangled Up in Tape

If organisations have chosen to back up data to tape rather than simply put old disks into storage, then a whole new set of challenges emerge for investigators. Tapes are very different to structured file storage solutions on disk.

At the basic level, disk structures can have three or four main formats - Windows based formats such as FAT32 and NTFS, Unix based formats such as UFS and EXT3, Apple HFS, and with the fairly standard equipment the access to the data is relatively straightforward.

Tapes on the other hand are far more varied.  For example, over a period of the last seven years tape technology has continued to change, particularly in relation to capacity and the latest LTO6 can contain a massive 6.25 terabytes of data.  There are at least 20 different physical formats of tape still in use, all of which require the appropriate hardware and given the frequency of technology refreshes, it is highly unlikely that tapes from seven years ago can be read in a current solution.

To add to this complication there are probably 20 software solutions used to write to the tapes, each with its own format.  So whereas you may need six or seven options to recover data from disk, when it comes to tape you may be looking at choosing between 400 combinations. Having the correct equipment and knowledge of the software used is essential (and the latter is often missing due to a fragmented or incomplete approach to retention).  Of course, once you have the tapes and before selecting a recovery option, you need to identify which tapes go together as spanned sets.

In an ideal situation where companies have been archiving and documenting everything and can identify the tapes required and they are in working order, the question is when did they last review the data that they are keeping?  The oldest set of data I personally have ever seen was 32 years old, and it contained microfilm reels as well.

Many companies place their tapes in storage and then fail to review the need to keep them due to the absence of a cogent data retention and destruction policy.  Not only can this incur unnecessary storage costs but in the event of a request for ediscovery, this significantly increases the timescales and costs associated with accessing, processing and reviewing the data.

Requests in litigation cases and from regulatory bodies and other investigators can be demanding and have stringent deadlines.  So when the request arrives and you have 15 years of tapes to consider, what are you going to do?  Hopefully the request will relate to a specific time period, but if you cannot identify the relevant tapes you may have to investigate all of them, causing delay in the response to the regulator and even the impression of non-cooperation.

On the other side of the coin, if forensics teams are able to find the data even when organisations believe it is irretrievable, they may well be at risk of falling foul of data privacy laws, especially now that general data protection regulation (GDPR) is coming down the track in 2017.

Businesses and individuals need to consider how they are ‘destroying’ data and if this really getting the desired outcome. Data can be found in places which we once thought were hidden or ‘forgotten’. However, as technology advances digital forensic teams are seeing a shift in data storage from magnetic data to cloud storage which is introducing new challenges.

The Social Media Shift

There was a time when electronic evidence was perhaps there to supplement other types of evidence. It has to be the other way around now as we approach cases knowing that the electronic evidence may well be the primary or only source of evidence.

As numerous news stories this year have demonstrated, this electronic evidence increasingly needs to be sourced from social media channels. Of course, it is not only celebrities who live their lives out on social media and you only need to look at your own digital footprint to know that a large part of who you are and what you say is now played out on social media channels and is recorded and capable of being played back.

Even when it is impossible to source information from an encrypted iPhone phone or WhatsApp message, there are normally other ways to identify the data that is needed for a case or investigation.

Luckily, our modern day dependence on technology has fuelled a massive growth in digital forensics. Assuming even tiny parts of original data are retrievable, digital forensics teams are able to replicate copies and produce a list of files and their content. Over the years, these teams have been able to adapt and advance their capabilities, and nowadays legal cases and crime investigations are heavily dependent on their services.

Some Solutions

Notwithstanding, it is now essential for companies to have an effective and fully documented information retention policy and practice that involves all of the relevant parts of ae business.  Some key questions need to be addressed. From a legal aspect; how long do records need to be kept?  From a security aspect; where should the records be kept?  From an IT aspect; how are these records going to be kept and what needs to be done when there is a technology refresh?  And finally from an overall business perspective, who is going to maintain all the necessary records and own the review process?

Future Formats

None of the scenarios outlined above suggest that anything will change in the future in terms of data storage complexities. Indeed, the number of formats will only continue to mushroom, adding to the pile of existing disks, tapes and devices already on the investigators’ inventory list. Good practice information governance is the only way to instigate streamlined data storage that can be cost-effectively examined by the forensics specialist.

Authored by Tony Dearsley, Principal Consultant at Kroll Ontrack.

(Source: Kroll Ontrack)

The UK government have this week postponed plans to privatise the Land Registry, dropping it from the Neighbourhood Planning and Infrastructure Bill discussed on Wednesday. The Land Registry has recorded the ownership of property in England and Wales for over 150 years and it’s suggested privatisation has brought with it concerns surrounding it’s transparency and service provision should it’s status change.

Search Acumen, one of the UK’s leading conveyancing search providers, is a business that works hand-in-hand with the Land Registry, accessing its data to provide efficient services to its customer base. Andrew Lloyd, Managing Director of Search Acumen, has called on the Government to drop its plans to privatise Land Registry, asserting that threats to both the industry and the freedom of data remain.

“The government is thinking again on Land Registry privatisation. If the abandonment of the sale is confirmed, this will be both a victory for common sense and a vindication of the property industry’s spirited campaign against the proposal over the past twelve months,” states Andrew.

“Here at Search Acumen, we welcome this step in the right direction but the matter has not yet been concluded - the threat to both the industry and the freedom of open data remains. Now is the time for property professionals to press the government on the sale and reiterate that it is not only bad for the industry, it is bad for everyone who owns or aspires to own a property.

“Land Registry has come in for quite a bit of criticism over the years for being outdated, old fashioned, inefficient. That’s part of the rationale for a sale. But over the past few years things have actually moved in a much more positive direction, with Land Registry making great strides in commercialising its data, and in grasping the potential of ‘Big Data’. This has allowed innovators and disrupters in the private sector – companies like Search Acumen – to transform the industry for the better through new products that utilise Land Registry data. Entrepreneurs and creative minds are unlocking the opportunities buried in big data, and deploying that acumen to create efficiencies for property and legal professionals.

“Land Registry is committed to going further and release more of its data sets in the near future, so why privatise and jeopardise all of this progress?

“As the UK follows the post-Brexit journey and the housing crisis continues, I hope that the Land Registry is used efficiently to help strengthen our industry rather than add to our problems.”

(Source: Search Acumen)