What are the benefits of using LawFlow for a Case on Appeal?
The key benefit of creating a casebook using LawFlow’s Casebook Tool is that you can create references in your submissions and evidence referring to the original production numbers or High Court proceedings numbers, and the system will automatically convert those to the Court of Appeal numbers once the casebook is finalised. This means you can draft your evidence and insert valid references before the Court of Appeal casebook has been finalised. When the casebook is finalised, you don’t need to manually update references in your evidence; the system will do that for you.
This is also beneficial if the Court of Appeal casebook gets amended in the late stages; the system will automatically update references from previous numbers to the current Court of Appeal casebook numbers.
For the system to convert references to the finalised casebook numbers, it needs to know the finalised casebook numbers alongside the numbers you wish to convert. If those numbers are not already in LawFlow, you can import the relevant information from a spreadsheet.
Practical considerations
Before loading documents into a Court of Appeal casebook, consider the following:
- Which folder should you load your documents into?
This depends on whether you are creating the Court of Appeal casebook for all parties to use, or if another party has created it:
– If another party has created the Court of Appeal casebook, we recommend you upload the provided documents to the Pre-numbered documents folder. This folder retains the document numbers as provided, enabling you to create hyperlinks to the provided bundle.
The creator of the casebook should also provide an Excel spreadsheet with document information, including Court of Appeal document numbers, dates, descriptions, original production numbers, and, if different, High Court numbers. You can import this information from a correctly mapped spreadsheet (refer to Appendix 5 of our Casebook Guidebook for details on preparing a mapping file).
– If you are creating the Court of Appeal casebook, you can either copy or upload documents into a LawFlow casebook. Refer to points 2 and 3 below for details on copying versus uploading documents, and the appropriate folders to load documents into. - Should you copy or upload documents into a Court of Appeal casebook?
This decision hinges on the location of the High Court documents that will be included in the casebook:
– If you created the High Court casebook and have an ‘up-to-date’ version in LawFlow, you can copy the relevant documents into a new Court of Appeal casebook. The system will retain all document information in the new casebook, including, if specified, the High Court document numbers.
– If the High Court documents that you will be relying on are held on your computer, you can upload those documents into a Court of Appeal casebook and import any document information you require.
Refer below for details on which folder to copy or upload documents to. - How do you want to number your documents?
The folder you choose for loading documents depends on your numbering preference. Do you want to retain the previously used High Court document numbers, or would you prefer to renumber the Court of Appeal set so that the numbers run sequentially?
– To retain the document numbers from a previous High Court casebook, load the documents into the Pre-numbered documents folder. If you remove any unnecessary documents, the original document numbers will remain, resulting in some skipped numbers. This is okay, as document numbers do not need to be sequential.
– To have the system renumber the Court of Appeal set sequentially, load the documents into a Series (Block) folder, which will automatically renumber them. To avoid confusion between High Court and Court of Appeal numbers, we recommend starting the numbering of Exhibits in the Court of Appeal bundle from a different series than the one used in the High Court casebook (e.g., a 400 series).
Note: Document numbers are unique identifiers that ensure all parties refer to the same document. It is not necessary for Court of Appeal documents to run sequentially or start with numbers in the 300 series.
Click here for step-by-step instructions on creating Court of Appeal casebooks for the following scenarios: [Guy, can we create a link to the info sheet?]
- Creating hyperlinks to a Court of Appeal casebook created by another party.
- Uploading a set of High Court documents from your computer, with the option to either retain previously used document numbers or renumber the Court of Appeal documents sequentially.
- Copying documents from an existing LawFlow casebook into a new LawFlow Court of Appeal casebook, with the option to either retain previously used High Court document numbers or renumber the Court of Appeal documents sequentially.