Law360 recently interviewed Head of Commercial Litigation Clive Zietman, asking his opinion on the various issues within the litigation space right now; from the pandemic, to the impact of technology, and the current complexities in fraud cases. He also talks about his career to date and path into the law.
Clive talks in detail about the firm’s involvement in the first virtual trial in the commercial court, and how this move to online trials is unlikely to go away as the world reopens given the benefits it brings.
Going deeper into technology, Clive mentions electronic disclosure and the benefits it brings to going through the sheer amount of documents that are now involved in a disclosure exercise due to electronic communication. Clive doesn’t think technology will replace lawyers however, more shift the focus of their role.
Clive outlines his career into the law, and how he wanted to be a journalist originally, he has a love of writing and is a published author. He says he fell in love with litigation as a trainee lawyer, and realised then he was a litigator through and through. He cites his interest in the psychology of fraud as keeping him interested in the role.
On discussing fraud, he comments that technology may have adapted the way people are defrauded, but says, “The frauds that have been footed for the past 2,000 years are exactly the same as those in Roman times. It’s just the format changes”.
Finally, Clive discusses whether we’ll ever have a US-style class action system in the UK. He mentions adverse cost orders and our opt-in system as the big differentiator. However he discusses the move towards group actions, fuelled, in part by better funding for cases.
The full interview can be found here.
Win without War: How to avoid litigation by Clive Zietman is available to purchase on Kindle here.
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