Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Class-action lawsuits — involving many tens of thousands of consumers and huge payouts — have long been a feature of the US legal landscape. But, until recently, this kind of mass litigation has been less common in the UK and the rest of Europe.That is changing, however. A report on European class actions by law firm CMS found that 133 European claims were filed in 2023. The total amount sought in class-action claims in the UK alone was about €145bn, with lawsuits encompassing more than 500mn class members.In the UK, the catalyst for change has been the 2015 Consumer Rights Act, which allows consumers and businesses to pursue collective lawsuits over breaches of competition law. The lawsuits gained ground after a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2020 allowed a class action brought by Walter Merricks, former chief ombudsman at the Financial Ombudsman Service, to proceed. He was representing millions of consumers in an action against payments company Mastercard.That lawsuit has paved the way for a wave of US-style class actions to be filed in the UK against other large companies, including tech groups BT, Apple and Qualcomm.Mass actions are on the rise elsewhere in Europe, too, spurred partly by the example of the “Dieselgate” scandal that has forced the Volkswagen group to pay tens of billions of euros in compensation to customers over the past decade. The carmaker had secretly fitted vehicles with cheat devices to show lower emissions in testing. Now, under the EU’s Representative Actions Directive, passed in November 2020, member states must have a mechanism allowing consumers to bring class action lawsuits relating to various EU law infringements. Given such vast numbers of claims, law firms and their clients are increasingly turning to technology to handle litigation — whether they are advising defendants or claimants.In Germany, law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer opened a mass claims unit in January 2022, informed by its work in guiding VW through Dieselgate claims. Working with Freshfields Labs, the firm’s legal tech unit, it aims to offer a central service for dealing with mass claims by using technology to manage caseloads. Hans-Patrick Schroeder, head of the mass claims unit, says that, in the past, Freshfields typically partnered with other law firms to manage workloads. But many clients wanted a single service and as little administrative work as possible. “One day, we sat down and thought about whether it would be possible to do this and leverage technology and use the legacy network for traditional Freshfields offices,” says Schroeder, a partner at the firm based in Hamburg. The mass claims unit has additional offices in Münster, Hanover and Nuremberg “so the lawyers can reach every court in two hours by public transport or car”, he adds.Freshfields manages claims in Germany by preparing court submissions using templates. It also allocates individual claims to a lawyer and inserts details on a central calendar database about which case is due in court and when. Its software recognises when documents uploaded in the case management tool contain dates for oral hearings, says Schroeder. “It will then update the case handler’s calendar, book transportation to the event, and ensure tickets are sent on so they can retrieve them. It is impossible to manage these cases without technology.”Your job is no longer to cut and paste — you have more time for court hearings and your work is more fun tooSuch systems mean “your job is no longer to cut and paste — you have more time for court hearings because you are not wasting time on routine stuff — and your work is more fun too”, he adds.As well as advising VW, the unit has defended mass actions on behalf of an online betting company against claims for repayment of gambling losses.Law firm Pinsent Masons also turned to technology to help banking clients defend lawsuits brought in the English courts by thousands of claimants over personal protection insurance (PPI). Banks commonly mis-sold the cover to customers in the 1990s and early 2000s.After a deadline of August 2019 was set by the UK regulator, a surge of consumers turned to the courts, making PPI complaints against banks and other lenders — often encouraged by claim management companies working for high rates of commission.Pinsent Masons advised a robust stance on many of these claims by challenging them in civil courts rather than settling automatically and now aims to offer the same approach to clients defending other mass actions. By using automation and relatively straightforward artificial intelligence tools, Pinsent Masons can triage large numbers of such cases and quickly prepare paperwork. “In mass litigation, the sheer volume of claims is always difficult just in terms of serving deadlines,” says Jacob Hay, associate at the law firm.Now, systems can track whether a document has been reviewed, for example. “It is able to spot trends, such as how long a case is taking at a specific court, the lifespan of a case and how long the court takes to list a final hearing, which is helpful as it helps inform strategy,” Hay adds.Technology has also been a boon for those pursuing compensation against well-funded defendants. In the UK, one of the most high-profile mass litigations in recent years has been the lawsuit brought against the Post Office by campaigner Sir Alan Bates and 554 other postmasters.The case, backed by litigation funder Therium, was settled by the Post Office in 2019 for £57.75mn. The High Court ruling, which concluded that the Horizon IT system used by the Post Office suffered from bugs, errors and defects, was crucial in paving the way for postmasters who had been wrongly prosecuted to be exonerated and demand further redress.Law firms that take on mass litigation without experience of deployment of technology may fail“Technology was like a lifeline,” says James Hartley, partner and head of dispute resolution at law firm Freeths, who represented Bates and the postmasters.“Here, we used a platform called Everlaw, which was very effective with AI built into it. It meant that, when the Post Office threw, for example, 5,000-7,000 KELs [known error logs, showing defects in the Horizon IT system] at us at a late stage of the court process . . . we were able to look through those.”Hartley believes class-action lawsuits will deploy yet more technology in the future. “Law firms that take on mass litigation without experience of deployment of technology may fail,” he says. “Litigation funders are looking for the right case and the right law firm . . . Funders may not be prepared to back cases unless the law firm deploys technology.”
