BlueStar Case Solutions Develops EDD Toolkit E-Discovery App

Chicago based litigation support services provider launches free e-discovery calculator application for smartphones.

BlueStar Case Solutions, Inc. (BlueStar), a litigation support services provider and consultancy, recently launched EDD Toolkit, a free e-discovery application (app) for smartphones. The app features a Cost Estimator, Time Estimator, Conversion Table and Glossary for common e-discovery questions with regards to ESI (electronically stored information) processing, document review and production. The EDD Toolkit e-discovery app is a useful application for attorneys, paralegals, in-house counsel and litigation support staff who quickly need answers about a particular e-discovery project.

“We are very excited about all the positive reviews we have gotten so far, including the enthusiastic comments we received last week at LegalTech New York,” says Desiree Salomon, BlueStar’s Marketing Manager. “It’s the ultimate e-discovery ‘cheat sheet.’”

The EDD Toolkit provides valuable reference resources and quickly estimates how much e-discovery may cost and how long the process may take. Along with a glossary of terms and a data-to-documents or pages conversion calculator, the application is quickly becoming an essential tool for the e-discovery practitioner.

EDD Toolkit e-discovery app’s full list of features includes:

Cost Estimator
E-Discovery, and the costs associated with it are a large portion of a client’s litigation spend. Using industry averages, BlueStar’s EDD Toolkit Cost Estimator estimates how much a user defined amount of data or number of documents for review could cost.

Time Estimator
The Time Estimator will estimate how long the ESI processing and review steps may take in litigation, and also has the ability to calculate how long it can take to scan paper documents into an electronic format.

Conversion Table
The Conversion Table calculates how many documents or pages may be found in a user defined amount of data. Broken down by common email and document formats, the user can easily estimate how much data exists in a tangible measurement, by the number of documents or pages.

Glossary
E-Discovery terminology and jargon can be perplexing to paralegals, attorneys, and anyone involved in litigation support, therefore the Glossary feature provides definitions for most common e-discovery related terms via a quickly accessible interface.

The EDD Toolkit is currently available for iPhone and Android, while BlackBerry and Windows 7 versions are scheduled for release later this month. To learn more or to download the EDD Toolkit app for free visit: http://www.bluestarcs.com/resources/app-support.

Via EPR Network
More
Law press releases

Employment Solicitors Thomas Mansfield’s David Gray-Jones in the Employment Appeal Tribunal

Employment solicitors have for a long time grappled with the thorny issue of what constitutes employment status.

The main distinction of importance is that between an employee and a worker. An employee is an individual who has entered into, or works under a contract of employment. Broadly speaking, a contract of employment is a contract of service.

The question of employment status has been blurred in recent years by the evolution of the status of the worker and has become a task for employment solicitors to define.

Of this predicament, Thomas Mansfield’s David Gray-Jones says, ‘Whilst workers have less extensive employment protection rights than employees, such as the right not to be unfairly dismissed, other statutory employment protections including the right to holiday pay or to complain about non payment of wages, often cover workers as well as employees.’

For employment solicitors, the concise and efficient way to examine such cases is through EAT, a test applied by an employment tribunal when making decisions around unfair dismissals.

David Gray-Jones, of the Employment Appeal Tribunal he appeared in on behalf of Word by Word Translations Limited, argues that;

‘The claimant was neither an employee nor a worker; the employment tribunal did not have authority to hear his various claims including those of unfair dismissal and unauthorised deduction from wages.’

A fundamental tenet of a contract of service (a conventional contract of employment) is the requirement to perform the services personally. Of interest to the employment appeal tribunal was the fact that Mr Kuncharalingam had the power to delegate, that is, send a substitute to complete an assignment when he was unable to do so himself.

Whilst not establishing a new point of law, this case can be distinguished from earlier cases where the issue of substitution has been considered. Had the company exercised its power to limit Mr Kuncharalingam’s ability to provide a substitute then the employment tribunal might have felt obliged to follow previous legal authority and found him to be a worker.

What distinguished this case was the fact that Mr Kuncharalingam had an unfettered right to provide a substitute. He did so without telling the company and the company did not object. Thomas Mansfield’s David Gray-Jones says, ‘I was able to detect an absence of requirement for personal service and his case failed.’

Via EPR Network
More
Law press releases