10 Acquisition International - Issue 3 2018 Howell & Co was established in 1977 by James Crocker, the managing partner. There are five partners in total, namely Bruce Jobling, Roland Gibbins, Peter Burden and Dr Laura Brampton. The firm is a traditional one which covers a broad range of practice areas, including civil litigation, large scale commercial litigation, and residential property to name a few. We profiled the firm to discover more about the exceptional services that they offer. ince its inception in 1977, the firm’s overall mission is to provide a high quality, personal service to all its clients – whether they be individuals or companies involved in large scale, high value litigation. The firm prides itself on its long standing reputation, both locally, nationally and internationally, for achieving excellent results for clients. This is achieved by taking a team based approach to cases – particularly in relation to commercial litigation – where attention to detail is key. Commercial litigation cases are headed by the department leader, James Crocker, who has a formidable reputation as a litigator. Howell & Co were delighted to hear of winning the award of Commercial Litigation Law Firm of the year – Midlands. On winning the award, James Crocker said: “Its brilliant. We’ve been practicing commercial litigation at Howell & Co for 40 years, and it is fantastic to receive some recognition for what we do here. In spite of being a relatively small firm, we really do place clients, and their needs, at the centre of our business. Whether it be a small scale civil litigation case in the Birmingham County Court, or a huge commercial litigation encompassing parties across multiple countries, we always give 100% to achieve the best result for our client”. Howell & Co are committed to keeping up to date with the most recent developments in law and practice. In order to do this, staff at the firm attend regular external training courses. Members of staff are also adept at sharing knowledge if they read about a relevant update, which allows everyone in Company: Howell & Co 1341 Stratford Road, Hall Green, Birmingham, B28 9HW Website: www.howell-solicitors.co.uk
[email protected] [email protected] Achieving Excellent Results S 1802AI01 the office to keep abreast of breaking news in their field of law and practice. In addition, Howell & Co has a history of working with the very best Counsel and QCs, which is a further way of enhancing their fee earners’ knowledge of the law and Court practices. One of the more recent points of discussion in relation to civil litigation has been the handling of ‘e-disclosure’. ‘Disclosure’ is defined by Part 31.2 of the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) as when a party to proceedings states that a document exists, or has existed. A document is defined by CPR 31.4 as “anything in which information of any description is recorded”. In many cases, the Court will order the parties to give ‘Standard Disclosure’. This requires the parties to provide disclosure of documents upon which they rely and documents which: a) Adversely affect their case; b) Adversely affect another parties’ case; or c) Support another parties’ case Parties are expected to make a reasonable search for such documents, with ‘reasonableness’ to include the number of documents involved, the nature and complexity of proceedings, the ease and expense of retrieval of any particular document, as well as the significance of any document which is likely to be located during the search. In additional to more traditional paper documents, cases over the past 30 years have seen increasing amounts of electronic disclosure. An “electronic document” is defined in Practice Direction 31B, paragraph 5(3) as any document held in electronic form, including emails, text messages and voicemail, word-processed documents and databases, and documents stored on portable devices such as memory sticks and mobile phones. It includes documents stored on servers and back- up IT systems, documents which may have been deleted, meta data and other embedded data. As a result, the software market has taken great leaps forward in attempting to assist law firms in identifying relevant electronic documents in “Howell & Co would suggest that parties to litigation consider the question of e-disclosure, and the preservation of e-documents (and all other relevant documents for that matter) at the outset of a case.”