I know many plaintiffs and defendants who used (or should have used) some form of litigation support services. More importantly, I know the issues of our clients are more complex and the lawyers we assist understand the value we bring to the litigation team.
I am hopeful you will not be shocked to read such services form a large part of I-OnAsia’s work for clients.
Whether it is a nonsensical civil lawsuit or a more serious criminal prosecution, we lift up the skirts, so to speak, in an effort to support out clients’ positions in varying spots of bother.
Tinkle me, or more likely suggest my name to your lawyer, if you think you might need some litigation support.
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” – Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes
The super-sleuth, albeit fictional, speaketh the truth. Of course, the issue at hand is eliminating the impossible. Given the whacky lawsuits I just summarized, one has to ponder if anything is impossible.
Litigation Support, basically, covers any activity the objective of which is to assist a lawyer to try a case. How long is a piece of string? Well…
Large-scale civil or criminal litigation requires lawyers, paralegals, accountants, plaintiffs, defendants and event private investigation firms to sift through an enormous amout of dead wood.
On an environmental note, I often wonder how many forests would be saved if people were just a touch more friendly or a little less nutty. If you ever saw some of the warehouses of paper produced for only one case, you would need a crane to lift up your jaw from the floor.
I digress, as I often do, but the point is litigation support services are essential to prepare for battle. Eliminating the impossible requires often mundane and time-consuming work ranging from pulling civil/criminal/corporate records to conducting word searches of emails to checking club/school memberships to asset tracing to…well, I hope you get the picture.
Why hire I-OnAsia to handle such an important element of a lawsuit?
First, we do not charge the same sort of hourly fees meted out by law firms passing on costs of their education, rent and navigating the often murky waters of the river known as “the law”. In 2016, Lord Neuberger, president of the supreme court of the United Kingdom, bemoaned the litigation burdens of excessive hourly rates among “city” firms that often exceeded GBP1,000 per hour. Ouch!!! Litigation is expensive. The lawyers with whom we work understand this issue. We work together with the legal eagles, and we complement their technical skills. A good lawyer as well as a savvy client should consider cost-effective alternatives to achieve their objective.
Second, we specialize in eliminating the impossible to provide our clients with the truth in a cost and time-effective manner. Such services include, but by the very nature of the beast are not limited to, the following:
- data analytics involving designing and implementing databases for managing, sorting, indexing, abstracting and coordinating data produced in major litigation, particularly for trial;
- detect and preserve evidence (metadata) in electronic media, including evidence sought to be destroyed;
- retrieving information on opponents, whether natural persons or entities, through public records as part of background checks and fact finding;
- identify and verify physical locations of real and personal property and, of likely greater importance, who owns the same;
- recovery of assets;
- identify known and unknown business affiliations that may prove useful;
- identify and vet credentials of expert witnesses;
- forensic accounting, including determining financial status of the adversary;
- access global data sources to support or impeach “facts”;
- learn locations of potential witnesses and interview the same;
- obtain information to challenge statements made in depositions;
- engage in a wide range of surveillance activities;
- research social media sites; and
- various investigations including infidelity and romantic interest, child custody, employment background, tenant screening, etc.
- and….
Doing extensive homework takes time, effort and focus on the ultimate goal of winning. The lawyers with whom we work know you should not be paying north of GBP1,000 per hour for this sort of work. In your interests, they refer the “grunt work” to I-OnAsia.
Third, the very nature of our team is to be skeptical. We adhere to Arthur Conan Doyle’s truism that “There is nothing as deceptive as an obvious fact.” Simply stated, when working for a client, we take the position that all obvious facts are nothing but well-dressed deceptions seeking a colonosocopy-like investigation.
Finally, we have the global network to ensure you engage subject matter experts. In the same manner you hire a lawyer to explain the law or an accountant to prepare your tax returns, we organize and, most importantly, manage the appropriate team of subject matter experts to handle the issues.
I think a Yank hack from the 1900s (Ambrose Bierce) summed up litigation quite nicely with the description that it is “a machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage”.
We do not really care if you are a pig (hmmm…), but we definitely will seek to help you to avoid being a sausage!!!
