Setting up an Electronic Disclosure Business - Case Study Example

Electronic Disclosure E-disclosure is the process of capturing, collecting, restoring, and manipulating the search of electronic documents as part of the system of disclosure in legal litigation. Electronic documents are found on a large range of PC hard drives, DVDs, CDs, USB devices, websites and other shared networks and a unusually large media back ground. These media ranges need to be sifted in order to disclose the material that is hidden. The e-disclosure business has to do with the act of sifting through these types of media in the search for documents that can be used in any legal issues. Documents can be electronic or otherwise; they are not the only potential media that are critical. The search of non-text or prior communications which includes; audio, visual is also extremely relevant in the e-disclosure business. Researching the social networks also could make a relevant source of data and information (Hoffman,2001 p45). Employees can post the information of the company or organization in the websites or the personal blogs. This information can be used in civil disputes and can assist in solving these disputes. Disclosure is done in several lives. The second life disclosure is relevant to criminal, regulatory, or civil proceedings. This is where information if acquired from an online world that includes the websites, blogs, and the social media. The online world also is composed of the voice and visual calls that are made by people regarding the information of organizations. This can also include the instant messaging services and chats. This kind of communication can only be recorded by one of the involved parties in the communication process. It is quite difficult for the disclosure business to get hold of the recorded messages from the second world unless the operator of telephones and the live streaming communication keeps a record of communications by every user. For the e-disclosure to perform this kind of event, then they will require one to have a court order to enable them to have access to these recordings. The lawyers who are involved in this business must be convinced that there is sufficient evidence about the information they are looking for in these kinds of recordings before getting the court order. E-disclosure will help to resolve several disputes among companies. This will give true issues and hence paving way for fair trials and settlements. In settling the commercial disputes people will no longer require paper documents to be able to give evidence, rather just a soft copy of the evidence will do the work. This is because in the revolutionalizing world of technology today, businesses are conducting their transactions online even the records of these businesses are being kept online, with the events of cloud computing and all that technology. Data can be easily trailed, and this makes it more difficult for companies to dispose or control the information of the company. If people start to ignore the electronic data, they are running in to a risk of missing out on extremely valuable information and vital evidence that could help Gary and Roby in one way or the other. The use of electronic disclosure is a tremendous opportunity that Gary and Roby should not pass out on. It is essentially a gold mine to create a business that its job will specifically deal with this kind of electronic disclosure (Hoffman, 2001 p67). Setting up an electronic disclosure business has got several advantages that could help the business of Gary and Roby to become a profitable company and help them achieve their goals in life. Since they have the expertise of this business, they will not be needed to employ other people with the expertise. They will start off with them using their knowledge to run the business and then as the business will start to grow then they will be employing people to work for them. The advantages of opening the electronic disclosure business include; the misconception of using electronic evidence in solving a case is becoming so common, and this will increase the complexity of the case. There is the misconception that this kind of information will also increase the costs of solving the dispute for clients and the lawyers. Despite of this misconception, lawyers in the United Kingdom are utilising the electronic evidence in doing their research and reviewing the technology in a way that is pro active to gain an advantage in winning their cases. The practice direction amendments in 2005 have given more clarity on what should be included in doing a standard disclosure. This amendment requires the parties to consider the use of the evidence that was uncovered by the electronic means. This has in turn developed a significant level of interest in e-disclosure since the creation of the amendment. Lawyers are increasingly combining their knowledge in legal matters and knowledge in technology in a number of cases and investigations. They are able to identify the different risks that are involved so early in case, they are able to sift the facts and uncover the key problems in the case at an extraordinarily high rate, and they are able to avoid the long legal wars that are quite unnecessary that take a lot of time. The demand for the training of the electronic disclosure methods, techniques, and technologies is appearing to be not only for lawyers to fulfil their legal obligations, but also because of the advantages that are being related with the use of technology to be able reduce the costs of reviewing the documents, and the costs of running the entire case till the end. Lawyers in the United Kingdom are using the electronic disclosure to develop and explore the best kind of practices (Hoffman, 2001 p76). Since international disputes are on the rise, the regulatory actions in the different jurisdictions are providing an extraordinarily large challenge for lawyers and their clients. The silos of information that is retained in the different jurisdictions are done so that a balance of compliance, privacy and retention regulations with the obligations of disclosure is placed at odds with a great desire to rationalise the infrastructure of the organisation. Lawyers are able to use the electronic disclosure to navigate this minefield of regulations and be able to help their clients to win the cases be providing the necessary evidence. The use of old fashioned way of ’lawyering’ is getting out of the way. The lawyers in the United Kingdom are at the moment approaching their cases in a different manner. They used to investigate by asking questions and doing all kinds of research. This used to be an extremely hectic and time consuming thing for the lawyers. Nowadays lawyers start investigating their cases by using electronic disclosure and using the forensic experts. This has in turn helped them to save time and be able to produce facts that cannot be disputed. Advanced technology is used to determine this kind of evidence and there is filtering the documents to get the kind of documents that are required. This has increased efficiency, and the accuracy of lawyers to be able to produce quality evidence for the case and they also enable the lawyers to produce credible material for the case. This enables a client to be served correctly. While a lawyer is preparing for a case, they use new technologies like searching for a concept that they will be using, and reviewing their technology. They do this and they are able to work their way through the collection of documents, and they are able to expand their thinking on the main issues of their case. These new forms of intelligent methods of searching for similarities and differences in the documents, this helps them to be able to group them together without straining a lot. Lawyers are able to group the topics of their evidences well and faster. This enables them to provide quick links to the evidence and hence saving a lot of time in the cases. The use of technology in the electronic disclosure helps the lawyers to minimise their costs and increase their productivity, on the other hand. This helps them to provide the relevant evidence that will help them in helping their clients with winning the case. The evidence that is disclosed electronically cannot be deleted or erased from any electronic media. This helps the lawyers to be able to acquire any kind of evidence that they will need to use in their cases. These are the advantages that will motivate Gary and Roby to register their company since most of the work they will be doing is to dig up data and information from electronic media. This information may be deleted or hidden in servers that will be secured; hence for them to provide this data to lawyers and other people, they have to be a registered company so that they will be deemed credible enough to provide this information to the lawyers for any legal action to be taken. When it comes to paying them there is no legal allowance for paying individuals for providing information for organizations. On the other hand, the disadvantages of setting up an electronic disclosure business. Some of the disadvantages include; the courts and other regulators are increasingly becoming somehow intolerant of the electronic disclosure that is not effective. The courts know that using electronic disclosure can be done effectively; hence they are not appealing themselves in hearing about the challenges that are involved in digging up the right information that is to be used in the law suits. When a lawyer gets substantial information and presents it to the court in the name of asking for more time to continue with the research work of the case, then the courts will start doubting the credibility of the ability of the lawyer to using the electronic disclosure method to dig up information about the case. The increase of the storage capacity will also increase the costs of performing the electronic disclosure. Hence for Gary and Roby to succeed in this business they need to have enough storage capacity and this will mean that they will be required to have enough capital to be able to do this kind of work. The data in corporate volumes grow at a rate of 40% every year. This in turn, increases the complexity of the ability to carry out this kind of information digging when the need will arise. There will be a variety of data to gig up from, and this will in turn raise the amount of time being used in this kind of work. This then calls for Gary and Roby to have prior and adequate preparations to ensure that they will be able to provide the required manpower to dig up the data in the shortest possible time. Cloud computing and outsourcing will create new risks. Since this is driven by the urge to reduce the costs, the redundancy, cloud computing becomes a matter of when for the large companies. This then makes organizations to run a risk of not being able to control their information. But they will be having the obligation of disclosing the information it can still be hacked and accessed by people who know how cloud computing is done. This will lead to complications of having an electronic disclosure business since they will have quite a difficult time in trying to maintain this kind of data loss. Since the innovation of technology is constantly changing, the information in companies is also constantly changing. This will lead the electronic disclosure companies to disclose the wrong types of information to the public because they will just dig up all the information regardless of the security classification of the information. This might make the companies lose their credible and sensitive information to other competitors who might develop the same kind of technologies. Hence Gary and Roby should take immense care of the confidentiality of the information that they will be digging up from any organization. Keeping track of the almost competing regulations at international levels is quite a difficult challenge. Gary and Roby will have to keep up with the recent technology trends that are changing on their day to day basis so that they will produce the sufficient information for their clients. While setting up their company, they will have to pass through the above disadvantages as a company (Ross, 1999 p45). Corporate personality is a principle that states that the property of a company is owned by the company as a different and separate person and not by the members of the company. The business of the company is conducted by the company itself as a different and separate person and not by its member. The company enters in to contracts as a very separate person, and not as its members. It does this while in relation to its property and the businesses of the company. In this case, Gary and Roby will form a company that will be conducting business on their behalf. This company will own assets and they will not belong to either Gary or Roby. They will set up a company under the companies’ act of 1982. Under this act, they will not be liable to the contract that the company will be entering to, and they will not be liable for the decisions that the company will be making (Ross, 1999 p54). By registering their business Gary and Roby will increase their chances of getting contracts from different organizations. This is because by being registered the company will be made available and legitimate to the public. People will have trust that the company will not collapse any day because the company will be having assets and property. They will increase the chances of the company to get more capital by raising shares and loans. It is easier for a company to be given a loan by the banks instead of granting loans to individuals. Hence Gary and Roby will be standing a greater chance of expanding their business by registering it. Gary and Roby’s registered company will be deemed credible when producing evidence in front of the courts. This is because the company will be having certain laws that will depict it to be credible for people to be able to trust its findings. This will on the other hand, increase the opportunities of the company in this field. The names that Gary and Roby will provide to the company will also determine the market of the company. Hence they should provide a name that will help them easily market their company. When it comes to the property and the assets of the company Gary and Roby will have to determine a criteria that will be used to divide their assets in the case of fallout. This is because in many partnership companies they usually have a disagreement which will be followed by the partners falling out. After which there will be a powerful legal tussle over the ownership of the property, and this does not usually depict a complete picture of the company to the public. For Gary and Roby to set up a private limited company in the United Kingdom they will be having some advantages since they will be incorporating partnership features, and features of a corporation. A limited private company in the United Kingdom is a popular and common entity of business. The shares of the private limited company are held in privacy of the partners of the company and other interested individuals. On growing and expanding, the company Gary and Roby will eventually convert their company into a public limited company. They will be eligible to trade their stocks in the stock market. But before that happens, they will need to register their company as a private entity and below is the process that will be undergone to register the company as a private entity. They will register their company with the company’s house where they will do this process by themselves, or they can use the electronic interface to register their companies. They will need to hire a lawyer, an accountant, or a secretary (chartered). These people will be treated as agents, and they will assist Gary and Roby to collate the required documentation that will be needed to be filed for the company to be registered as a limited company. Some of the documents that are needed for the registration of the company include; the memorandum of association, the articles of association, the forms ten and twelve that will be having the details and address of directors of the company, and the fee that will enable the processing of the documentation for any manual registration process. Once all these things have been provided, then the process of registration becomes remarkably easy as the rest will be the name searching of the company and booking the name. Then the company will be given provisional registration or permanent registration if they were able to provide all the requirements that helped the company to prosper (Turner, 2005 p78). The lifting of the corporate veil can be done when the company engages itself in any form of fraud. This will happen if the directors will engage themselves in a corruption case that will result in the company destroying its name in public. This can also take place when the company becomes bankrupt as a result of scandals in the company. The employees of the company should work in transparency to ensure that this should never take place since it is such a terrible thing for all other companies that are conducting the Electronic disclosure business. This will then result in the company tarnishing its name and putting people on an extremely unpleasant situation. Gary and Roby should ensure that they try so hard to cushion the activities that could lead to putting their company at a bad risk. They should also ensure that they put rules according to which the company will run on. These rules should ensure that the customer will be treated with utmost confidentiality and that the company is being held responsible for any leaked information. This will make sure that the company will gain trust by customers and that they will be able to work and produce the best results (Turner, 2005 p67). Works Cited Brodie, D. (2010). Enterprise Liability and the Common Law. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Brough, G. H. (2005). Private Limited Companies: Formation and Management. London: Sweet & Maxwell. Hallis, F. (1999). Corporate personality: a study in jurisprudence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hoffman, E. (2001). Ace the Corporate Personality Test. New York : McGraw-Hill Professional. L. Sealy, S. W. (2007). Cases and Materials in Company Law. Oxford : Oxford University Press. Laws, A. B. (2007). Corporate Directors Guidebook. Chicago, Illinois: American Bar Association. Ross Grantham, U. o. (1999). Corporate Personality in the 20th Century. Oxford: Hart Publishing. Steven Emanuel, L. E. (2008). Constitutional Law. London: Aspen Publishers Online. Steven Emanuel, L. E. (2009). Corporations. London: Aspen Publishers Online. Turner, T. J. (2005). Local Government E-Disclosure & Comparisons: Equipping Deliberative Democracy for the 21st Century. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America. Read More