The arrival of the photocopier fifty years ago caused a change in this practice. Instead of solicitors meeting, looking through the documents and saying which they wanted copied, each party simply photocopied all the discoverable documents on their list and sent them to the other side along with the bill for photocopying. Initially the cost of photocopying was still quite high and this practice took some time to be established as solicitors disputed bills. But by the late 1980's, with industrial photocopying at a penny a sheet, photocopying of documents in discovery proceedings had become a major revenue earner as law firms charged their clients around 20 pence per sheet.

The unfortunate result of this practice was a vast increase in the number of documents in a case. Most of the documents were only marginally relevant - but the cost of photocopying marginally relevant documents was a lot lower than the cost of employing a professional litigation solicitor to review each document and decide whether it was worth photocopying or not. Yet the task of reviewing the relevance of documents always had to be done. It was pushed down the line into the courtroom. Simple cases developed mountains of documents. Barristers were required to review the documents in a case and produce small bundles of key documents. Sometimes the numbers of documents in the case became so large that it became impossible to try the case. Frequently the cost of reviewing all the documents in the case exceeded the value of the litigation.

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