It’s time for the profession & the judiciary to engage constructively to create a world class civil disputes regime, say Ed Crosse & David Bridge
Over the past couple of years there has been growing momentum for major change in the approach to disclosure of the courts in England and Wales. The proliferation of data exchanged between people and stored by individuals and companies has left the traditional approach to disclosure looking antiquated. The language of the current rules assumes that hard copy documents will be the norm, with a separate Practice Direction (PD) bolted on to cover electronic documents, which in truth now make up the vast majority. The entitlement to ‘inspect’ documents, rather than receive copies in native format complete with meta-data, is indicative of this, harking back to a period when lawyers visited each others’ offices to view lever arch files of material.
There have, of course, been changes in practice. The courts have accepted the reality of electronic disclosure and methods of searching for documents that,
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