Member Spotlight: Julian Coleman
With a background in Physics, Engineering and Software, Julian Coleman has 30+ years’ experience at the COO level conceiving new products and leading the project management, system design, engineering, software development, manufacturing, compliance and delivery teams.
Company Name and Description: 10th Mind is an e-discovery company that has been created with a major focus on innovation, not only for general e-discovery activities but in particular to assist litigation funds to overcome their specific challenges and threats – a special approach demanding a change of mindset.
Our name reflects our focus on innovation and is derived from the intelligence community – the Tenth Man principle. It requires that, where a group of ten analysts is working on the same data and nine of the group reach the same conclusion, it is the duty of the 10th person, the 10th Mind, to examine the issue on the premise that the other nine are wrong.
The ‘group think’ consensus may be right most of the time, or even mostly right all of the time, but tends to favour business as usual. The 10th Mind is there to challenge the consensus view and proffer different solutions.
10th Mind has defined (and addressed) four key areas:
- Costs – there is in our view an increasing understanding that costs must be reduced
- Process management and recording – not only does a very efficient process drive costs down, but it can (and must) include extensive record keeping of the entire process in order to support effective litigation
- Technology will play an ever increasing role
- Litigation Funds – a rapidly expanding market both in terms of finance available and in market sectors, funds are naturally focused on profit, a critical part of their business being case selection – and costs are a major factor here too. Funds have their own challenges, but also are having a significant impact on the wider litigation landscape.
Addressing these issues has been very interesting. As a seasoned C level executive it has been interesting to analyse and then dispense with so much convention. A business structured around what is today rather than yesterday can look very different and cost far less whilst being intrinsically more responsive and adaptable. In terms of what we can do, having no legacy structures to worry about has major benefits which transfer to the client:
- Costs are reduced. Many expensive overheads can be dispensed with.
- We have developed our own project management and recording systems; based on PRINCE2 and facilitated by our unique software, integrated with selected new commercial products, management processes are vastly improved. Full traceable record keeping and transparency are built in and automated, essentially at zero cost.
- …and finally but crucially, 10th Mind will work with funds on special terms:
- if the fund is prepared to take on a case we will work on a CFA basis
- we will also work with the fund on a CFA basis to undertake early stage investigations, in our view crucial to improving the evidence on which to base case selection and ultimately, therefore, profitability.
At 10th Mind we are convinced that not only is such an approach necessary now, but there will be ever-present forces driving the need for continued evolution:
Costs are becoming a major issue. Significant concern has emerged in the English litigation funding community over last year’s Paccar judgement. Omni Bridgeway’s Co-chief Information Officer, Matt Harrison, has said that some litigation funders may not survive the economic instability as “they don’t have the money available to them to invest in cases and in law firms.” Bloomberg Law also recently noted that some litigation funds are currently facing financial difficulty.
Burford, one of the biggest litigation funds in the world and which describes itself as “the institutional quality finance firm focused on law“, undertook surveys from which they report:
“[Over half of respondents to its poll] (52%) say drastic steps are needed to better manage legal costs, such as moving away from the billable hour, limiting outside firms and more innovation from outside counsel.“
and
“Finance and legal professionals agree: the legal department’s top priority for the next 15 years is to minimize legal costs. But they are also unified in prioritizing that the legal department simultaneously find new ways to recover value.“
It is clear there is a consensus that costs, specifically cost reduction, must be considered, and in our view, litigation funds will be a driving force.
Litigation funds have a very different focus from law firms, crucially they exist to make profits and that means winning cases, which in turn places a focus on the initial assessment stage. And, as previously observed, the sector is expanding both in terms of available funds and in scope, driving change and posing challenges for dispute litigation as a whole.
Logically as funding takes over a larger percentage of dispute litigation, the greater the overall impact this will have on costs. Arguably as saturation approaches, such pressures can only increase.
Process management and recording is in our view now essential, not merely tracking the ingestion and processing of data from collection to court, but the recording of all the management processes which defined the data management: who did what, when and why, recorded in forensic detail. This not only, if done well, improves business processes but it evidences them should legal challenges arise. Hence this data must be ‘forensics ready’.
Technology can and will help. But it must be the right technology which assists the first two objectives, ie improving practises whilst reducing costs. Having found critical gaps in commercial offerings, we have worked on our own solution.
Website: www.10thMind.com
Founded: 2023
Headquarters: UK (London)
Member Quote: We feel it crucial that providers must always question the legacy thinking and structures that entrench lack of efficiency, accuracy, and high costs. By applying the 10th Mind principle, we are providing services in a new way: shared risk, formal (and unique) project management and software, along with specialised services specifically to assist funds combine to make us, to our knowledge, unique in the e-discovery sector.
If you would like to find out more as to how we can assist you and your clients, we would be delighted to meet you. Please contact us through our website (www.10thmind.com) or email our COO directly at julian.coleman@10thmind.com.
