Belfast based law firm Cleaver Fulton Rankin has announced the appointment of Director Kerry McCloy to lead a new Legal Technology Group.
Cleaver Fulton Rankin has invested significantly in people, technology and training. They have embraced innovation and are the first Northern Ireland law firm to launch a Legal Technology Group, providing expert eDiscovery services.
Kerry McCloy and a team of eight project managers, solicitors and legal professionals, supported by cutting-edge legal technology, will provide large scale document review and expert eDiscovery services to nearshore law firms and support the specialist legal teams at the firm in the delivery of legal services to clients.
Kerry said, “I am pleased to join Cleaver Fulton Rankin and lead the new Legal Technology Group launch. The addition of this new service offering will add to the already strong reputation the company and its people have in the market.”
Kerry is on the roll of solicitors in Northern Ireland, Ireland and England & Wales and joins the firm having worked previously in an Alternative Legal Services Group of a large global law firm. She specialises in commercial litigation and legal technology, with experience conducting large scale document reviews, including eDisclosure exercises, regulatory investigations and Data Subject Access Requests (DSARs).
She explains: “Discovery is probably one of the most difficult, yet vitally important, aspects of litigation. It can be an onerous process. However, we can use the technology’s advanced analytics and search filtering technology to conduct early case assessment, identify patterns and trends in the documents at the outset and reduce the document pool to a much smaller, more manageable set for review. This presents the client with a high quality, more efficient offering in terms of time and cost.”
eDiscovery, in simple terms, is the process of legally reviewing and sharing electronically stored documents, traditionally in the context of litigation. Law firms have historically dealt with information management and document review using labour-intensive hard copy review solutions with paralegals and junior lawyers.
Cleaver Fulton Rankin is ahead of the curve when it comes to the employment of tech and the introduction of a dedicated specialist team.
Jonathan Forrester, Managing Director, said, “We saw an opportunity to create efficiencies and support the modernisation of legal services. We are the first indigenous law firm that has decided to take this step. After a great deal of hard work, we have set up our Legal Technology Group, headed by Kerry, our Innovation and Legal Technology Director. She has hit the ground running, and we are confident the Group will open up significant opportunities for us.”
eDiscovery isn’t the first time the firm has embraced revolutionary technology. During lockdown, the firm made headlines when it led the way in alternative dispute resolution using the Consumer Code for Online Dispute Resolution (CCODR) platform to resolve a client dispute using remote mediation and deliver their legal services seamlessly and without interruption.
Innovation and legal tech have, undoubtedly, enabled us to streamline our services and grow our business. It is at the heart of our company.”, Jonathan adds.
To find out more, check out the interview with Managing Director Jonathan Forrester and Director of the new Group, Kerry McCloy, on page 44 of the latest edition of the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and Industry Ambition Magazine: https://lnkd.in/g3DX37Pa.
To find out more about Cleaver Fulton Rankin and the Legal Technology Group, please click here.
