Thoughts

Welcome to our blog where we share our expertise and opinions on a range of topical issues.

Your Instructing Solicitor Is Your Colleague, Isn't He?

There is a question that every expert working inside a multi-disciplinary practice should expect in cross-examination, and it is not really about methodology. Your instructing solicitor works for the same group as you. You share a brand, a client relationship and, ultimately, a set of accounts. Explain to the tribunal why your opinion is your own. It is a fair question. An expert who cannot answer it crisply, on the first attempt, has a problem that no amount of technical rigour will repair.

Planning for the Next 14 years Not the Exit

A perspective from Systech International Most senior people who join a PE-backed platform do so on the promise of a specific trade: give up some certainty now, in exchange for a large payout when the fund exits. That trade only works one way. It depends entirely on the fund hitting its return target: typically a 20%+ IRR over a five-to-seven-year hold. Miss it, and the mechanics built to reward you can just as easily leave you with very little. We think a growing number of talented rainmakers are running into that exact problem right now. This is a look at why, and at what an independent, privately owned model like Systech’s offers as an alternative.

When the Ratchet doesn’t Pay Out

A perspective from an independent, privately owned multi-disciplinary practice. Private equity has moved through the claims, dispute resolution and legal advisory market at pace. It brings capital for acquisitions and technology, but it also brings pressure: return targets and leverage that, sooner or later, tend to show up in client fees. Systech isn’t PE-backed. We’re privately owned and financed. That’s not a disadvantage to manage around. It’s a structural advantage we intend to use. So the question we’ve had to answer isn’t “can we afford to compete with PE-scale AI investment?” It’s “what does AI adoption look like when it only has to answer to clients, not to an investor’s exit timetable?” Here’s how we’re approaching that.

Infinity and Beyond: Surviving with AI!

Private equity has moved through the claims, dispute resolution and legal advisory market at pace. It brings capital for acquisitions and technology, but it also brings pressure: return targets and leverage that, sooner or later, tend to show up in client fees. Systech isn’t PE-backed. We’re privately owned and financed. That’s not a disadvantage to manage around. It’s a structural advantage we intend to use. So the question we’ve had to answer isn’t “can we afford to compete with PE-scale AI investment?” It’s “what does AI adoption look like when it only has to answer to clients, not to an investor’s exit timetable?” Here’s how we’re approaching that.

The Best Time to Build a Claim Is Before You Need One

A specialist subcontractor’s entitlement to time and money is not created in a dispute. It is created, or quietly lost, week by week on the project, in the notices that were or weren’t served and the records that were or weren’t kept. By the time a matter reaches arbitration, litigation or a board of contract appeals, that entitlement is already fixed. Whoever you bring in at that stage can only recover what the paperwork is capable of proving.