Disclosure control: are you ready for the big bang next year, asks HH Judge Simon Brown QC
In the search for “proportionality”, Chapter 37 of the Jackson Report identified disclosure and “handling documents” as the biggest “Manhattan” in lawyers’ bills of costs and in need of court control. The Digital Age has revolutionised the way we all instantly communicate around the globe, making paper documents anachronistic, apart from their resting in the vaults of the Bodleian Library.
The most valuable evidence in any case is to be found in contemporaneous digital information—electronic documents. The volume of this precious information (electronically stored information (ESI)) is enormous and it is diverse and various. It is impossible or prohibitively expensive to print it. Lawyers—including judges—must embrace new technologies if they are to be “fit for purpose” in proportionate civil litigation; a recurring theme in the Jackson Report.
Jurisdictions around the world
Civil jurisdictions around the world have taken different approaches in their attempts to solve the problems posed by this proliferation
