Tailored discovery

LawFlow has specific features for carrying out tailored discovery under the High Court Rules. Unlike ‘standard discovery’, tailored discovery requires documents to be discovered in categories (or some other method of classification). Examples of categories may include:

  • Date ranges
  • Specific subjects
  • Types of documents
  • Key individuals

This can be useful for limiting the scope of discovery to ensure it remains focused and proportionate, though it can also be used to expand the scope of discovery in appropriate cases. It can also make it clearer between the parties why certain documents have been discovered.

In LawFlow, you can set up the tailored discovery categories relevant to your project, and then specify which category (or multiple categories) relevant documents fall into. When you generate document lists, you can include a column showing each document’s category, and (optionally) choose to group the documents by category (e.g. so all “Category A” documents are listed together, then “Category B”, etc).

It is important to consider tailored discovery before attending the first Case Management Conference when discovery orders are usually made. If you want to seek tailored discovery, or think that another party may seek it, you should consider in advance which categories are appropriate. Ideally, this can be agreed with the other parties before the Conference so that orders can be made by consent.

For more information on using LawFlow for tailored discovery, please contact us. If you are already using LawFlow, you can set up tailored discovery categories for a project via Documents > Tailored discovery categories.