What is class action litigation? It is a legal procedure that is used to handle a law suit when many people have been injured by a common act or a set of actions. Class actions can be brought in either federal or state courts, though a recent federal law.

In the United States Federal Courts, class actions are governed by Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Defendants can move class action lawsuits from state to federal courts by the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005. A lawsuit becomes a class action when one or more plaintiffs who is called Lead Plaintiffs files a lawsuit claiming some kind of harm and then asks the court to certify the case as a class action.

What are the types of common cases in this area of litigation? They are law suits involving,

• Tobacco
• Asbestos
• Financial frauds
• Employment
• Pollution
• Breast implants
• Agent Orange (herbicide)

What makes the best class action attorneys? Previous experience in class litigation with a good track record and sufficient resources to do legal research are the main criteria that are looked into while choosing a lawyer for action class litigation.

One of the biggest advantages of class action litigation is that this type of law suit is an aggregation of a large number of individual claims. With smaller recoveries class action often makes the aggregated recovery worthy enough for the attorney's effort. Thus it increases the efficiency of litigation and also lowers the cost of litigation for the individuals involved.

Managed Outsource Solutions (MOS) is a US based legal outsourcing company that offers professional services in legal transcription, litigation support, legal research, legal document preparation, legal coding to clients in the US, Canada the UK and Australia.

Labels: Federal Rules of Civil Procedures, FRCP, legal, litigation

In the US wiretapping or telephone tapping refers to the monitoring of the telephone or the Internet by a third party usually in a hidden way. The United States Foreign Intelligence Court of Review can authorize any federal agents to wiretap the telephone and Internet for use as evidence in court (better known as lawful interception) which is usually approved only when other ways of detecting criminal activity is not possible. The wiretapped recorded conversation on the phone is often transcribed (converted into text form) by a professional transcriptionist and the typed transcripts later becomes a legally authorized documents that can be produced in court during litigation and trial. It is believed that it was wiretapping and intercepting of phone calls to his second wife in Beirut that led to locating the hideout and arrest of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Wiretap on a computer network was first ordered in 1996 when a hacker tried to enter the Harvard University and US military websites and computers. Recently there was a controversy after the Bush administration authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to used legalized but warrant-less surveillance of suspected international Al Qaida terrorists within and outside the US. Even though wiretap as evidence has been used in the US since many years, in the UK the government has only recently started considering the introduction of wiretap as court evidence after its latest review of antiterrorism legislation.

Besides wiretap transcription there are many other types of specialized legal transcription services that are offered by professional legal transcription companies like,

• Court proceedings transcription
• Verbatim transcription
• Testimony transcription
• Trial transcription
• Legal letter transcription
• General correspondence transcription

Managed Outsource Solutions (MOS) is a US based legal outsourcing company that offers a wide range of legal services including legal transcription, legal coding, legal research, litigation support, law firm web design and legal animation to its clients in the US, Canada the UK and Australia.

Labels: lawful interception, legal, telephone tapping, transcription, transcription services, wiretaps

Arbitration is the alternative choice available to resolve disputes without going for litigation or trial. Both the parties have to agree that a third party arbitrator will act as both judge and jury. Arbitration can be binding or nonbinding. Quite often the parties may agree to follow the rules put down by the AAA (American Arbitration Association).

It is well known that litigations can be for a very long period of time and often can take years to settle. Unlike in litigation, during arbitration the rules of evidence and related procedures become quite relaxed. One can generalize and expect the following benefits during arbitration.

• Less expensive than litigation
• Faster process
• Lesser involvement with lawyers
• Binding and non binding arbitrations possible
• An arbitrator's fee is lesser than that of a lawyer
• Helps sooner settlement in non binding arbitration
• As the arbitrator is not bound by the procedure rules he is more practical
• No appeals can be filed on a binding arbitration

Before deciding on arbitration it is essential for the client to reflect and see if arbitration should be preferred over litigation after considering all what is at stake including time and the money involved. The arbitration clause has to be well reviewed, if necessary with the help of a lawyer.

Managed Outsource Solutions (MOS) is US based legal services provider offering outsourced professional services in online legal arbitration, legal documentation, legal consultation, legal transcription, legal research and litigation support to clients in the UK, USA, Canada and Australia.

Labels: AAA, alternative to litigation, arbitration, binding, legal, nonbinding

Legal communities and specifically the professional litigation support professionals have been facing a challenging situation in E-discovery and document review for some time now. Ever since the recent changes were made to FRCP it is obvious that in no litigation can avoid technology to face the ever expanding universe of electronic evidence. The olden ways of working with huge boxes of files at the law firms are over. According to Forrester research the spending in E-discovery alone is going to increase five fold in the next five years. However there has been a constant struggle to make the process of document review as quick and user friendly as possible considering the huge quantity of data made available and the drain in terms of time and money.

The new technology in E-discovery is basically a data analysis concept that brings back a tinge of the traditional methodology of searching through groups of relevant document. This new enhancement in e-discovery technology is referred to by different terms in legal circles including, conceptual review, topic review, and data clustering. Instead of searching through millions of documents each time using keywords, the new method groups the data/document according to topic/theme even before the document review process begins, so that one will know beforehand what can be expected in a set of data. Now it has become easier to search for your needle in the haystack. Benefits include better workflow and work organization according to skill.

More details on the technology and how it compares with the earlier technologies can be got at http://www.ontrackinview.com/whitepaper/topic2006.pdf . Litigation support professionals will love to see the latest issue of the litigation support magazine for more information on this new concept review technology at http://www.litigationsupporttoday.com/LST%20AUG07-FULL.pdf#page=8

Managed Outsource Solutions (MOS) is a US based legal outsourcing company and legal services provider that offers professional yet affordable outsourced nationwide litigation support, document review, legal documentation, legal transcription, legal web design and legal research services to clients in the US, the UK,Canada and Australia.

Labels: data analysis, e-discovery challenges, legal, legal document review, litigation support, technology