Reducing discovery and disclosure obligations with the opposing party

By either specific legislative provision or common law, it is becoming increasingly common for parties to seek, or for Court’s to order, a limit on discovery and disclosure obligations. To reduce the time and cost burden on lawyers and their clients the obligations are usually limited with reference to key word searches, categories of documents, date ranges, key stakeholders, and document sources. The outcome sought is for the review volume to be proportionate to the value and complexity of the dispute. There are several matters to take into account.

Consider

• Uploading all your documents to the review platform for processing. With insight into the total document set you can identify if any reduction to your discovery and disclosure obligations is necessary.

• Testing proposed limitation methods (dates, keywords etc.) within your review environment to understand how they function and whether they can be improved.

• Reporting on the results of those tests. The test outcomes be used to support arguments that determine if what each party is proposing is reasonable.

• Seeking technical advice on best practice for building the searches, categories, dates, and other reduction methods. It is important your proposed solution be executed practically within a review platform.