SCL Groups News

January 1, 2006

Two New Groups
The Beds, Bucks and Cambs Group has been formed with the aims of recognising and meeting the specific IT law and technical needs of organisations in or near Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Cambridgeshire. The Chair of the new Group is Dr Jim Bradley of Kimbells LLP in Milton Keynes and included on the committee are Hassan Manji, the Finance Director of Bluepoint Corporation, and Chris Underwood, the Managing Director of Smooth Design Ltd. Jim Bradley indicated that the Group’s committee have deliberately included hardware, software and related service supplier representatives on the committee “to ensure we understand the realities of meeting commercial targets without fear of legal redress.’ The need for the new Group was partly evidenced in his view by the fact that ‘our locality contains a variety of organisations with aims reflecting that of the SCL, including the UK’s largest online retailer that legally and cost effectively sold a product online every 43 seconds during the festive period.’


The Group’s inaugural meeting, “Who’s got your data? No security, no business” is to be held on 9 February at the Kimbells office.


The other new Group reflects an area of long-standing concern to SCL members. It is the Privacy and Data Protection Interest Group. Included on the new Group’s committee are Sue Gold, Executive Counsel at The Walt Disney Company Ltd , Usha Jagessar, Solicitor at DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary UK LLP and Nick Tyler, Legal Director at the Information Commissioner’s Office. David Berry of Charles Russell LLP is the new Group’s Chair. He commented that the Group hoped over the next 12 months “to address a range of current issues – by way of example, the decision of the European Parliament last month to approve the Data Retention Directive reinforces the fact that privacy and data protection regulations continue to have the capacity to impact on so much of the work of SCL’s members”.


Watch the Events section of this Web site for the announcement of meeting dates and topics.


SCL KM Group: 2006 Programme
The SCL KM Group has announced its programme for the coming year.


The great success of last year’s carefully focused programme of meetings and accompanying articles, and the positive feedback received from KM professionals, have led the SCL KM Group to follow a similar general plan for 2006 to that adopted in 2005. The series of five meetings kicks off in February and will run throughout the year, with a two-month break in the summer holiday period.


The topics for 2006 are:



  • knowledge audits, measurement and incentives

  • the practicalities of running IT projects from a KM perspective

  • the social side of KM  (including wikis, blogs and other social and collaborative software)

  • KM and commoditisation

  • KM and clients (how far should law firms go in meeting client requirements involving IT etc)

  • individual requiremnts v. firm-wide feasibility.

The intention is that each meeting will lead to an article for the magazine on the identified topic, although the precise topics may alter to take account of the wisdom arising from the meeting.


Watch the Events page of this Web site for dates times and further details.