In the mid-1990s Lord Woolf held a two year inquiry into the civil legal system. It showed that legal costs generally exceeded the value of compensation awards when claims were less than £20,000. In one case cited, the legal costs came to £69,295 on a claim which was worth £2,000.

Consequently to deal with the rain of paper in the discovery process he recommended a far narrower scope for it - and also recommended that the discovery process was renamed "disclosure" since this term was closer to the meaning of the process as understood by the non-lawyer. Today under the modern Civil Procedure Rules ("CPR") the scope of disclosure does not turn on relevancy, but rather on specific language featured in Part 31.6 of the CPR, "Standard disclosure- what documents are to be disclosed".

31.6 Standard disclosure- what documents are to be disclosed
Standard disclosure requires a party to disclose only -
(a) the documents on which he relies; and
(b) the documents which-

(i) adversely affect his own case;
(ii) adversely affect another party's case; or
(iii) support another party's case; and

(c) the documents which he is required to disclose by a relevant practice direction.

Each party in a case has to prepare a disclosure form (N265) which requires each party to state whether it carried out an electronic search and to state by list what was searched and the extent of that search.  But few lawyers seriously address themselves to this task. Paragraph 2A of the Practice Direction to CPR Part 31 sets out in clear language what lawyers are supposed to do. Speficially it requires each side to consider in a rational non-adversarial manner what electronic materials they have which might contain evidence, reveal this to the other side and "discuss any issues that may arise regarding searches for and the preservation of electronic documents. This may involve the parties providing information about the categories of electronic documents within their control, the computer systems, electronic devices and media on which any relevant documents may be held, the storage systems maintained by the parties and their document retention policies." (Paragraph 2A2). This discussion is meant to take place before the Case Management Conference and if they cannot agree, they are directed to refer the matter to the judge for directions at the earliest possible date.

In practice this Practice Direction is ignored by both lawyers and judges since few know how to go about such a task. 

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