Civil Litigation: ‘Discovery' Is Not The Same As ‘Disclosure' (Forensic e-Providers Please Note)

Every other day, it seems, I receive marketing emails or phone calls from firms offering forensic services in the field of electronic document disclosure. What some offer me, though, is an 'e-discovery' service. Save your time! I am a solicitor practising in England and Wales, where Lord Woolf abolished 'discovery' in the late 1990s (replacing it with 'disclosure'), and not an attorney in the USA, where what is there called 'discovery' still exists.

It's no good proclaiming that 'e-discovery' in the USA and 'e-disclosure' in the 'UK' are essentially the same. They're not (at least not in England and Wales – whatever practices are going on north of the border (in Scotland) or across the North Channel (in Northern Ireland) being ones which they are free to indulge in in the privacy of their own jurisdictions).