DLA Piper case study

Legal translation and interpreting services for one of the leading court cases of 2015

Capita TI worked with DLA Piper throughout 2015 to offer professional legal translation and interpreting services to assist with transcripts, contracts, court orders and witness statements for a high-profile negligence case.

Our comprehensive and secure end-to-end service including translation, interpreting, proof-reading and in-context review gave DLA Piper assurance that their documents were being translated accurately, and that all communications and information in a foreign language were interpreted clearly and concisely for the case in question.

Described by the legal press as one of the top litigation cases in the UK in 2015, DLA Piper are acting for the vendor of QPR Football Club, Barnaby Holdings LLC, in a substantial professional negligence claimsolicitors retained on the sale, Mishcon de Reya.

Proceedings have been commenced in the High Court for professional negligence and breach of fiduciary duty relating to the sale of the shares in QPR Holdings Limited to Sarita Capital Investment Inc and Bernard Ecclestone in 2007.

The case was listed for trial in December 2015 and Capita TI has provided extensive support to DLA Piper in the preparation of the Claimant witness evidence in Italian, French and Portuguese languages.

The challenge

Security
Security & confidentiality
Speed
Quick turnaround time
Interpreting
Translation &
interpreting required

With the legal press profiling this as one of the leading litigation cases to hit the courts in 2015, the client needed to work with a leading language service provider that could handle aggressive turnaround times whilst being able to maintain a very high level of quality. Security and the protection of the client’s documents were paramount to this case.

This litigation case involved a premiership football club, so confidentiality, trust, professionalism and industry knowledge were all attributes that were vital to the trial.

To assure the case was handled appropriately, a witness statement of 46,000 words needed to be translated from Italian into English in the space of 3 days. The standard turnaround time for such a project would ordinarily be up to 4 weeks.

Evidence for this case was provided in 4 different languages so DLA Piper required an interpreter for each language pair to ensure all spoken communication of the court case was clear and accurate between all parties.

How we helped

Team
Dedicated team
C
Certified translation
Legal
Linguists with legal background

Capita TI was on hand to provide certified legal translation and interpreting services to this major high profile UK court case from start to finish. In order to meet the aggressive turnaround time requirements, Capita TI put into place a clear workflow management system to assist with the fast delivery of this project. As industry knowledge was also vital to the case, Capita TI deployed a team of native speaking linguists who were highly qualified with strong legal backgrounds, and who all had a minimum of 8 years legal translation and interpreting experience. In order to comply with strict security and governance policy, all linguists were sourced from within the UK.

With a legal case such as this, Capita TI understands just how important it is to get the translations right, how accurate interpreting plays a crucial role in a court case, and that there really is no margin for error.

Clear and concise communication with the customer was of paramount importance, especially when dealing with their sensitive or personal information.

The translation of the witness statement needed to remain faithful to the source, and the tone of the text had to be maintained at all times.

The result

3
days taken for
translation on this case
7
days Capita TI provided
interpreting services
250
languages offered
by Capita TI
46,000
words translated
on this case

Due to the robust workflow management system that Capita TI had put into place, along with the highly-qualified linguists working on the job, Capita TI was able to deliver an accurately translated witness statement back to DLA Piper within their strict time frame and budget.

Capita TI also fulfilled interpreting requirements for this case in December 2015. Interpreters were provided for Italian to/from English, Brazilian Portuguese to/from English, and French to/from English for a total of 7 days at the courts.

What the client said

“We have recently used Capita TI’s services on this substantial professional negligence claim relating to the sale of QPR to Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore. We had a very tight deadline to prepare lengthy witness statements in several languages, with many late amendments to the statements. I was very impressed by the excellent support provided by the Capita TI team in meeting our requirements. Our own Italian speaking lawyer also complimented the high standard of the translation work.”

Mark Goodwin, Partner, UK Litigation and Regulatory Group

“Service has been fantastic! We have been under so much pressure to turn things around and the team at Capita TI has accommodated us at very short notice. We are very pleased.”

Christina Sharma, Senior Associate

What’s next?

A future request has been scoped out for interpreting requirements for DLA Piper – Capita TI will be retained for the French, Italian and Portuguese interpreting work for this case.