Caoimhe Powell
Caoimhe is Associate Director, Disputes for Alternative Legal Services in the UK, US and EMEA region.
Caoimhe leads the delivery of legal services within the Alternative Legal Services Disputes Practice, managing a large and experienced team of qualified lawyers and legal analysts located in Belfast, Johannesburg and New York.
Caoimhe has supported clients on the firm’s largest Disputes matters, across litigation (to include class actions and remediation schemes), investigations and arbitration across a wide range of sectors.
Caoimhe has previously spent time on secondment to eDiscovery and Legal Technology and on secondment to the ALT team in Australia where she led the first ALT Australia team in 2015. Caoimhe continues to work closely with her Disputes colleagues in Australia and China to provide global alternative legal services support on Disputes matters for the firm and its clients.
Caoimhe enjoys collaborating with clients to find solutions to their challenges and has extensive experience in deploying technology and process to deliver volume intensive elements of large-scale contentious matters in an efficient, cost effective and risk managed manner.
She routinely works with clients to deploy innovative resourcing solutions including virtual bench and scalable resourcing models to meet project milestones or procedural deadlines.
Background
Caoimhe completed her training contract in Manchester and spent the first few years of her career in private practice in Manchester, before returning to Northern Ireland to join HSF in 2012.
Experience & expertise
Selected matters
- a retail client in connection with a high-profile voluntary remediation scheme involving 3,000+ claims. Assessing eligibility under the remediation scheme rules, reviewing evidence, assessing consequential losses and presenting the case to an independent Panel. Involvement in the Scheme's post-offer dispute resolution process which involves leading follow up meetings with the scheme applicants and/or their legal representatives with the aim of resolving any outstanding issues.
- RBS Group in relation to the defence of a claim by shareholders relating to the largest rights issue in UK corporate history, including management of a large-scale disclosure exercise and the provision of litigation support.
- a construction client in an arbitration arising from a major construction project, leading a global UK and Australia based team in a review of 600,000 documents utilising predictive coding for relevance to 27 issues privilege and confidentiality.
- an insurance client in relation to proceedings in the UK Commercial Court. Predictive coding technology was deployed in the disclosure exercise to reduce the volume of data by 73%. Designing workflows and process for the efficient preparation of chronologies and witness statements.
- an energy client on the first UK Commercial Court matter to use predictive coding, advising on the use of technology, managing the document review, chronology preparation and providing witness statement assistance.
- a retail client, providing a crisis response in relation to an urgent Friday night request to support a client with a serious cyber-security ransomware incident, immediately mobilising a global response with the implementation of our follow-the-sun resource model which was critical for a matter like this where every second counts for our client.
- a financial services client in finding flexible resourcing solutions, including a virtual bench of qualified team members and several secondees to assist with customer complaints and claims assessment
