Situation

Our client was working on a dispute in the Commercial Division of the Supreme Court of Victoria. As required by the relevant Practice Directions in this jurisdiction the opposing party put forward a document exchange protocol setting out their proposed eDiscovery requirements for this matter and sought our client’s agreement.

We assisted our client to review the protocol to ensure that it represented current best practice and would not place any undue burden on them or their client for the ongoing review and exchange in the matter.

Solution

One of our experts who regularly works on matters in the Supreme Court of Victoria reviewed the technical document and identified several elements that departed from what is considered Australian best practice, namely the exchange of “.dat” files and non-text searchable PDF documents. Our team highlighted these deviations, their cost and time implications to our client, along with some proposed amendments and supporting arguments for their adoption. This advice was provided within a few hours of receiving the draft document.

Impact

Our guidance around the form of the protocol and practical impacts of the relevant clauses allowed our client to:

• Consider the true impact of each technical term before providing agreement

• Oppose several oppressive and burdensome terms with arguments justifying their position

• Convince the other party to agree to the changes on the basis that it would make the process more efficient for all involved and would be less of a burden from a financial perspective

• Save the legal team’s time, and their client money, that would otherwise have been wasted adopting an inefficient process