Resources

The claimant has issued proceedings in the Commercial Court in London and has instructed a legal team based in London.

In order to prove the claimant’s case, the legal team determines evidence from four factual witnesses will be required.

The claimant is a Scottish company and two of the witnesses still work for the claimant at its base in Edinburgh. The third witness lives in Hong Kong and the fourth in Texas, USA.

The legal team decides to interview each of the witnesses in person.  In preparation for these witness interviews, each witness is sent two lever arch files of documents in hard copy by courier.

One partner, three associates and a trainee fly to each of Edinburgh, Hong Kong and Texas for the witness interviews.  Travel schedules are not coordinated so they all arrive at different times and take a taxi to their 5* hotel.

At the end of the interviews, the lever arch files are couriered back to London.

Much later, when the witness statements have been drafted and approved by the witnesses, a hard copy of the witness statement and quite voluminous exhibit is sent to each witness for them to sign and return to the legal team in London by post.

Carbon footprint is 51 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (the vast majority of which is caused by flights). This is equivalent to approximately 249 return journeys from London to Edinburgh by car, or 45 return flights from London to New York.

The CMC at the Commercial Court in London court is expected to last no more than one hour as almost all the points have been agreed.

Each party has instructed a counsel team to attend the CMC for them (each side with one senior and one junior barrister), and the solicitor team for each party (one partner, three associates and a trainee, as above, all based in London) will also be attending, together with four client representatives who will fly down from Edinburgh.

Both the judge and counsel have insisted on using hard copy bundles, which has resulted in the printing (and couriering) of some 3,000 pages.

During the course of the hearing, it becomes apparent that two additional documents should be added to all the bundles, so a trainee takes a taxi back to the office to print off the requisite number of copies, and takes a taxi back to insert the documents into each copy of the bundles.

Carbon footprint is 1.2 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (the vast majority of which is caused by flights). This is equivalent to approximately 6 return journeys from London to Edinburgh by car, or 1 return flight from London to New York.

The CMC at the Commercial Court in London court is expected to last no more than one hour as almost all the points have been agreed.

The court, claimant and defendant all agree that as the hearing is estimated to last less than half a day it should be conducted remotely.  The court gives permission for client representatives to attend via a live link from Edinburgh.

In light of the decision to hold the hearing remotely, counsel and the court agree no hard copy bundles need to be prepared and instead rely exclusively on electronic bundles.

During the course of the hearing, it becomes apparent that two additional documents should be added to the bundles, so a trainee adds these electronically from her desk during the hearing.

Carbon footprint is 0.006 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent. This is equivalent to approximately one one-way journey from London to Windsor by car.