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Litigation
John Merlo - Litigation exponent
I have litigated for many clients Australia wide.
I have briefed very senior Queens Counsel including Walter Sofronoff, Robert Holt, Doug Savage, Melanie Hindman, Gareth Beecham, and many other senior and junior counsel.
I regularly utilise a range of high-level experts including cost analysts and forensic data analysis experts, ground penetrating radar, concrete x-ray, hydrophilic experts, geotechnical experts and quantity surveyors.
I have acted in the Supreme Court, the District Court, the federal courts, the magistrates courts, the Queensland Civil Administrative Tribunal, The Building List, and in the Family Court of Australia.
I have acted to commence arbitration proceedings for Principal caused delay against telecommunication company Digicel (PNG) in Papua New Guinea.
I have obtained injunctions including to prevent heavy plant being shipped out of jurisdiction to Ireland and regarding defamation in respect of sabotaging $40 million of contracts in a complex matter involving fraud and various criminal offences for a national insurance builder.
I have successfully constrained access to unconditional financial guarantees in respect to wastewater recycling facilities constructed on a major mining site.
I have instituted proceedings and negotiated settlements in respect of delay and disruptions nationally regarding construction of Maximum-security prison sites in the Northern Territory and South Australia and the ACT.
I have instituted proceedings under the Security of Payment Act in respect of solar farm dispute against Acciona Australia in ACT.
I have instituted proceedings in respect of the Security of Payment Act in the Northern Territory for principal cause delay in disruption in respect of a major landscape project in respect of Public Works project during the monsoon period.
I have acted in every state of Australia concerning Instituting adjudication proceedings in respect of national construction and local disputes.
I have advised on complex high level intelligent infrastructure disputes with liquidated damages of $6000 an hour.
I have drafted a brief of criminal complaint to Queensland CIB for a Western Australian corporate client in excess of $300,000, and have provided numerous high-level advice sometimes in excess of $100,000.00
I regularly provide high-level advice reports involving the services of such experts as Geo technical experts, hydrophilic experts, cyber fraud experts.
My approach
I approach litigation from the perspective as if it was my own personal matter. Every decision I make for you isn’t matter I would have made for myself were it my matter.
I take ownership of your matter and I run it with priority.
I take a highly technical legal approach nuanced with strategic and commercial focus.
I am incredibly detailed, the devil is always in the detail and in my experience the lawyer who always goes that one step further triumphs.
I will always go that one step further for your matter.
E Discovery - Why use my e-discovery services
I can offer data collection services across a wide range of data sources and devices, including - Relativity, Ringtail, Summation and Nuix using industry leading forensic software. At Merlo Law I make sure we meet all regulatory requirements utilising standardised collection methodologies and chain of custody guidelines.
Stand with me head and shoulders above in using world class technological protocols to incisively cut to the heart of your matter - before you spend big dollars.
Litigation attracts significant costs for litigants, and 70-75% of this cost is attributable to the review of discovery documents. My review teams can provide scalable support from highly qualified review experts, equipped with the latest legal technology solutions providing corporate teams with the additional capacity required to agilely manage larger projects. My team can conduct in-depth analysis of acquired data, working with various experts to assist in discovering findings that are of interest to clients, law enforcement and regulators.
Technology Assisted Review
Why Choose Technology Assisted Review?
I can use different technology assisted review models and workflows including Relativity Assisted Review and Active Learning.
Technology Assisted Review (TAR) includes a range of state-of-the-art technologies that reduce the number of documents requiring review and identify ideas and concepts within a document population. TAR facilitates the implementation of workflows which result in efficient, time-saving review, and also vastly increase the accuracy of documents chosen, vastly improving efficiencies in review outcomes.
Do you have a large document population?
I understand the complexities and challenges of unstructured data and offer scalable, cost efficient solutions for search, retrieval and review in a legally defensible manner.
By using TAR also known as predictive coding, I can save you time and money by applying select coding choices from a set of documents to the entire set of documents.
Using TAR I can combine powerful technology, our legal expertise and a robust review workflow protocol to effectively review large document sets accurately in an efficient, low risk, and time and cost-effective method.
In the initial phase I utilise my subject matter expertise to review tranches of documents in the initial phase. After each tranche of documents is reviewed, coding is applied to conceptually similar documents throughout the dataset.
This ensures clarity in process, and reporting is provided after each round where any discrepancies in coding are highlighted and addressed.
The coding assisted designations are refined, as more, and more of your coding decisions are considered and utilised the with documents.
This iterative process of code, review and report continues until the my review team agree with the categorisation of the document tranche.
While this process requires more upfront consideration than a standard linear review, the process can drastically reduce the amount of time to complete a document review – saving you time and legal dollars and making sure your best case is put forward – fully supported, and on time.
Early Case Assessment
Is Early Case Assessment for you?
If you need early case assessment, a total case assessment or just a first pass review of any size data set then you need early case assessment.
Early Case Assessment or ECA refers to the electronic process of quantifying risk and the scope of risk prior to intensive engagement in a legal matter through the early evaluation of electronically stored information.
This ECA solution provides both government and corporate clients a high-level review of data, enabling lawyers, forensic units, and litigation support teams to analyse data, and provide an early case assessment, a total case assessment or just a first pass review of any size data set.
With ECA visual summary reports I will provide you an overall picture of your data as well as analysis and identification of critical trends or patterns in data such as date and email volume by domain. This information can be used to easily identify areas to focus on in your matter.
Analytics
Why use Analytics?
Analytics is search and find technology well beyond keyword searching, I can use Analytics to manage your electronic information based on the content. It can be applied to any part of the review process of your matter.
Based on a few lines of text, or ‘seed sets’ of example documents our analytics engine can save you big dollars by automatically categorising documents by identifying issues within document sets, and by grouping together documents with commonalities.
Using this technology effectively within the review workflow process it is possible to quickly prioritise, allowing the most relevant documents to be reviewed first.
Using Analytics in the documents review workflow greatly reduces the risk of inadvertent disclosure of privileged or confidential documents.
Case Study
A National Builder company was involved in litigation over a corporate criminal matters. Only four lawyers were assigned to the case, overseen by one independent consultant – an especially small team, given the 900GB of data collected for the case. De-duplication reduced the client’s original count of over 6 million documents down to 4 million documents. The client agreed on a list of keywords to help identify relevant documents.
A document tranche was agreed upon. The selected tranche was ‘seeded’. A selection of keywords culled the document count significantly further, down to around 115,000 documents. It was estimated that that if four lawyers had to review all 115,000 documents linearly – the review would take 1,300 hours to complete. The TAR process was engaged and around 2000 relevant documents were identified with a 2% margin of error which was deemed acceptable by the client.
Global Support
As a member of Lawyers Associated Worldwide, through Merlo Law I may offer an unprecedented level of support to our clients in the major legal centers of the Asia Pacific region Europe and the United States, with tasks ranging from complex due diligence exercises, to data reviews, to discovery reviews and complex investigations.
If suitable, I may utilise review teams available in the Asia Pacific region and in India with experienced legal support professionals available 24/7, all year round. Our teams endeavour to provide an unparalleled service.
We may also offer on-site embedded review teams, with access to the full suite of technologies offered, for complex and sensitive matters.
We also do offer competitive and transparent pricing models based on the volume of data and the complexity of the review, secure hosting solutions and capability to scale to meet the requirements of projects of all sizes.
Forensic and Expert Partnerships
I partner with court appointed and other field and forensic experts with specialised technical knowledge gained through years of experience working closely with clients like you, on matters as broad as bio-deteriation, industry specifications, delay, destructive testing and analysis, environmental and technical, geotechnical, fraud investigations, criminal offences, IP / identity thefts, employee misconducts, forensic accounting, litigation and arbitration. My team of Experts work across law enforcement, government agencies and the private sector.