Aphelion Insider

Aphelion Legal Solutions’ manager and member of the board, Mike Geske, in conjunction with Pincus Professional Education, presented a CLE seminar on Outsourcing Legal Work on December 11, 2012. The recorded program and comprehensive, written course materials are available for $129. The course materials provide links to all the primary and secondary authorities covered in the seminar and reliable sources of additional guidance.

Mr. Geske’s seminar covers the ethics of outsourcing legal work offshore and domestically, focusing on the most recent state and local ethics opinions, case law, and other authorities that address how to outsource legal work without engaging in or aiding or abetting the unauthorized practice of law, including:

• How the outsourced legal work must be supervised;
• What client information must be protected and how;
• When and how outsourcing must be disclosed to the client;
• How to avoid conflicts of interest when outsourcing legal work; and
• How to bill the outsourced work appropriately.

In addition, the seminar shows how domestic and international privacy laws can affect outsourced legal work. How to choose an outsourcing vendor is also covered, along with negotiating and entering a contractual relationship with the vendor. Finally, the seminar covers the basic rules about appropriately protecting outsourced legal work from discovery and best practices for maintaining confidentiality.

The seminar has already has been approved for 1.0 hour of MCLE credit in California, Illinois and Washington, for 1.0 hour of ethics credit in California and Washington, and for 1.0 hour of professional responsibility credit in Illinois. Pincus Professional Education will provide assistance to attorneys seeking CLE credit in other jurisdictions.

Nearly 200 metro area lawyers gathered this morning to share breakfast and raise funds for City Year. City Year partners with local DC schools to improve math and reading scores, and provides mentoring for at-risk youth. Leading the charge in advocating on City Year’s behalf, Art Block, Comcast’s General Counsel, enthusiastically addressed the measurable impact City Year makes in DC public schools. The event was a huge success, generating over $71,000 in just a few hours.

Aphelion Legal Solutions co-sponsored the breakfast, driving attendance and spreading the word about City Year’s local impact. Aaron Lawlor, Aphelion’s President, was among the event’s Host Committee members and is himself a City Year Alumni. Mr. Lawlor commented, “this event demonstrates the DC legal community’s joint support for public education and innovative organizations like City Year.” Aphelion Executive Director, Hiren Patel, couldn’t agree more. “City Year is an amazing organization and Aphelion is excited to be able to work with them in fulfilling their mission.”

The event received various media coverage including this article at Legal BisNow.

About City Year – City Year unites a diverse group of young adults for a year of full-time service, giving them the skills and opportunities to work as tutors, mentors, and role models in city schools. These young leaders transform schools and communities across the United States. In DC, for the 2012-2013 service year, there are over 160 young adults working in 16 DC schools. During the course of their year of service, they will perform hundreds of thousands of hours of service – tutoring at risk children in reading, math, science, running after school programs, and facilitating spring break camps.

Last month, Texas federal Magistrate Judge John D. Love ruled on a dispute about an almost-agreed case management order which required that “HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL shall not be sent, distributed, or otherwise taken to any location outside the United States.” Eon Corp. IP Holdings, LLC v. Landis+Gyr Inc., et al., 6:11-cv-00317-LED-JDL (Mem. Op. E.D. Tex. June 12, 2012) (click here). Both sides moved for a protective order: Plaintiffs planned to outsource litigation support services offshore and Defendants feared security breaches of their sensitive business information. The Magistrate Judge struck the quoted language from the draft protective order, ruling that “it is not persuaded that one unfortunate incident that occurred in an unrelated case amounts to a ‘clearly defined and serious harm’ such that all transmission of confidential material outside of the United States should be forbidden. Unfortunately, breaches of protective orders do occur; however, the Court has the ability to impose severe sanctions for noncompliance.” The Court ordered the parties to meet and confer about whether additional protections could and should be fashioned and stated that the parties should include at least three provisions in the final Protective Order, all of which are typically included in case management orders governing complex domestic litigation about sensitive, commercial, or other proprietary information. Those three terms are familiar to any practitioner experienced in such matters, namely: “Prior to receiving any Protected Material, a person located outside of the United states shall (1) review the Court’s protective order in this case, (2) agree in writing to abide by the terms of the Protective Order, and (3) submit in writing to the undersigns jurisdiction for the purpose of resolve any issues that may arise concerning the protective order, including the ability and willingness to personally appear before” the court.

The focus of the 8th Annual Advanced eDiscovery Institute is “Making the Case: Developing Legally Defensible eDiscovery Best Practices.”  The event is hosted at the Ritz Carlton, Pentagon City, Virginia on November 17th and 18th.  It brings together leading eDiscovery experts from across the country to address a variety of salient issues and includes more judicial speakers than any other eDiscovery CLE program. 

Some of the event topics include: 

• how large companies are strategically planning comprehensive compliance and eDiscovery programs, including making the return on investment case;
• how different states are addressing eDiscovery considerations;
• the challenges presented by investigations before federal agencies and multinational litigation; and
• the application of tested methods like statistical sampling and project management in the eDiscovery context. 

Aphelion is a proud sponsor of this year’s event.  Aphelion’s President, Aaron Lawlor, explained, “[w]e’re really looking forward to discussing our boutique consulting, project management, document review, and legal staffing services.  We’ve been ahead of the curve on a number of issues, including leveraging offshore resources to develop cost effective solutions, and this event is a wonderful opportunity to share our ideas with other thought leaders in the industry.”  He added, “[i]t’s also a great chance to introduce prospective clients to the advantages of working with boutique eDiscovery providers.”

Aphelion Legal Solutions has been certified by Catalyst Repository Systems for training and management of review projects using Catalyst’s propriety solution – Catalyst CR.  Catalyst CR is a hosted search, review and analytics platform for litigation support, regulatory compliance and other document-intensive matters.  CR is designed to support the heart of litigation, making it easy for attorneys and staff members to cull, cluster, review, analyze and produce documents from a single web-based system.

Aphelion’s Certified Catalyst CR Trainer provides training to end users who manage and support various types of litigation and document review projects.  This training provides reviewers and site administrators the knowledge to search, review, and analyze documents quickly and accurately.  Aphelion can also train power users and site administrators how to create review forms and rules, batch and assign documents, and manage overall project workflow. 

Aphelion’s Certified Catalyst CR Project Manager will work closely with Catalyst to ensure your site is setup and documents are uploaded correctly.  In addition, Aphelion’s CR Project Manager will provide overall site administration, ensuring each and every one of your projects run smoothly.

To find out more, call (713) 579-9754 or email sales@aphelionlegal.com.

A spirited crowd gathered at Hillyer Art Space to support City Year Washington, DC’s 2011 Alumni & Friends Fundraiser.  The event raised money for several important initiatives including Camp City Year, City Year service projects, and corps member development.  Leading this year’s sponsors was Aphelion Legal Solutions, whose President Aaron Lawlor, is a City Year Seattle Alumni.  Mr. Lawlor commented, “this [City Year] event, like others, demonstrates the positive energy and change that can be effected by a group of civic-minded idealists.”  “City Year is an amazing organization, and Aphelion is excited to be able to work with and support them in their important mission.”          

About City Year – City Year unites a diverse group of young adults for a year of full-time service, giving them the skills and opportunities to work as tutors, mentors, and role models in city schools.  These young leaders transform schools and communities across the United States.  In DC, for the 2010-2011 service year, there are over 140 young adults working in over 10 DC schools.  During the course of their year of service, they will perform hundreds of thousands of hours of service – tutoring at risk children in reading, math, science, running after school programs, and facilitating spring break camps.

Aphelion’s Mike Geske has prepared a white paper about a lawsuit pending in India alleging that 31 of the most well known western law firms and a separate LPO company are illegally practicing law throughout India.  The petition seeks an order from the High Court in Tamil Nadu requiring various agencies of the government of India, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and the Bar Councils of India and Tamil Nadu to stop the named (and all other foreign) firms practices immediately under the Advocates Act of 1961 and, as an interim measure, an injunction prohibiting the firms from practicing law in India while the case is pending.

The full white paper is available here.

Aphelion President Aaron Lawlor and Sensei Enterprises President Sharon Nelson have authored an article entitled, “Do It Yourself ESI Collection – Risky Business for Clients and Counsel.” The article is featured on MyLegal.com and addresses how the advice and oversight of outside experts can result in cost savings and a more defensible collection process. Click here to read the article in-house and outside counsel are talking about.

Aphelion Legal Solutions announces a webinar on December 17, 2009 at 5:00pm EST. Patrick Oot of the Electronic Discovery Institute, Anne Kershaw of A. Kershaw, P.C.//Attorneys & Consultants, and Aphelion’s Michael Geske will be discussing methods to assist litigants and their counsel on solutions that meet FRCP 26′s reasonableness requirements. In particular, the distinguished panel will be discussing the views of various jurists and the implications of a newly published study by the Electronic Discovery Institute and the Text Retrieval Conference. There is no charge for attendance.

To register for the webinar, please call (713) 579-9756 or click here. Additional information on the webinar and the panelists is available here.

Aphelion Legal Solutions is sponsoring an Electronic Discovery Institute event at the Newseum in Washington, DC the evening of November 12, 2009. This will be the 5th annual After Party held in conjunction with the Georgetown University Law Centers CLE Programs yearly Advanced eDiscovery Institute.

The After Party is a fundraiser for the eDiscovery Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to resolving electronic discovery challenges.  Aphelion’s sponsorship and support will help the eDiscovery Institute continue to conduct studies of litigation processes that incorporate modern technologies, measure the relative merits of new discovery technologies and methods, and share the results of its studies with the public free of charge.