Show And Tell - The New Disclosure Rules

In this article, Michael Axe focuses on the new obligations regarding the disclosure of physical and electronic documents, which came in to effect on  1 April 2013, when the so-called "Jackson Reforms" overhauled the way in which court proceedings are conducted in England and Wales.

Since the Civil Procedure Rules were first introduced in 1998, parties involved in Court proceedings have had to "disclose" the relevant documents that they have to the other side.  As the technology progressed, the rules were updated to reflect the fact that a "document" was now as likely (or even more likely) to be in the form of electronically stored information ("ESI") as a piece of paper.  Nevertheless, the basic procedure for disclosure remained the same, as did the timetable which the parties had to follow, and also the test for determining whether or not a document needed to be disclosed to the other side.