Electronic Lists

PRACTICE DIRECTION - THE USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN CIVIL PROCEEDINGS

The draft Practice Direction includes the following:

1.   The use of technology by the parties to civil proceedings is encouraged where it is likely substantially to save time and/or cost, or to assist the court in dealing with the case expeditiously and fairly. 

6.  (1)        This paragraph applies to any case in which

a party considers that it might be advantageous to make use of technology (other than limited use such as ordinary use of a computer for word-processing), and/or

disclosure of a substantial quantity of material held in electronic form is likely to be required.

                ...

(2) ...The parties shall endeavour to reach agreement on all matters relating to the use of technology, including:

(i)  the appropriate method for exchange of electronic versions of documents;

(ii) the use of technology in the process of giving disclosure, including the basis of charging for the provision of electronic copies of Disclosure Documents, and the exchange of Disclosure Data in an agreed electronic format using agreed fields;

              ...

9.  Appendix 2 contains a protocol for the exchange of documents and Disclosure Data electronically.  This protocol should be adopted unless it is inappropriate.[1]  The parties may however agree to vary the matters set out in Appendix 2 if it is appropriate to do so.  If parties fail to agree on the methods and formats to be adopted, the default methods and formats referred to in Appendix 2 shall apply unless the court orders otherwise.

At the time of writing, Appendix 2 has not been published.

Several key principles follow from the proposed 'encouragement' or 'requirement' that Disclosure Lists are exchanged electronically, as 'data'.

• The elements of the 'data' must be readily identifiable.

• We believe that firms should be able to comply using existing tools, such as Word.

• The detail is to appear in an as yet unpublished Appendix to the consultation draft.

We suggest that Disclosure Lists are by default exchanged electronically in an agreed ‘data’ format (which includes a suitable columnar word processing or spreadsheet format which does not ‘lose’ any of the granularity of the information.  The Court might put sample templates on its web site).

A suitable sample is set out below:

Template Word Table for exchange of Disclosure Lists

Below is a 6-column Microsoft Word table. The first five columns correspond with the standard elements of a Disclosure list. The sixth is to allow for ‘textual’ dates that are not real dates. 

The only thing which really matters is getting the names into the correct format and being consistent about dates.

Names

The proposed standard format for names (which follows the usual conventions of most Lists) is:

FirstName LastName of Organisation e.g. Fred Smith of Snooks & Co Ltd

It may, of course comprise only an individual:

e.g. Fred Smith

or an Organisation:

e.g. Snooks & Co Ltd

Multiple names are separated by commas:

e.g.

John Smith of Snooks & Co, Fred Garvey of Snooks & Co

…and it follows from this that there should be no commas within a name.

Getting the Names Right

Why bother?  There is some work involved in getting Names entered correctly. The main reason for taking the
trouble is that if you are using a litigation support system you can only search for Names with any accuracy if each person has one label only to identify him or her. If you are exchanging data, it helps if the data you receive is in the same format as your own.  The easiest way to achieve this is to use a recognised standard.

A refinement can be to add square brackets round Job Descriptions, if they are needed, and by adding Titles in opening round brackets.

Here are some more detailed examples:
First Name Last Name Tony Blair
First Name + Last Name of Organisation Tony Blair of HM Government
First Name Last Name [Job] of Organisation Tony Blair [Prime Minister] of HM Government
Title First Name Last Name [Job] of Organisation (The Rt Hon) Tony Blair [Prime Minister] of HM
Government
[Job Description] [Prime Minister]
[Job Description] of Organisation [Prime Minister] of HM Government
First Name Second Name Third Name Last Name A C L Blair
 

Not surprisingly, our own Openlaw litigation support software handles names and name variants entered or imported in these formats and converts the text on import into a fully populated contacts database of all the individuals and organisations in the case.  Openlaw also provides tools to enable naming inconsistencies and spelling error to be tidied up and corrected very easily.

If names in this format are loaded into Openlaw, they can be parsed, that is, automatically reduced by Openlaw to their components of Individual and Organisation. They can then be displayed in a list as:

John Smith of Snooks & Co

…but appear in an index of names as:

 Smith, John of Snooks & Co

Dates

The standard date format is dd/mm/yy. It can be dd/mm/yyyy if you prefer. The Openlaw import process will assume that “01” is 2001 and “99” is 1999

If any of your dates are estimated dates, add an extra column called “Showdate” which may contain e.g. “Undated” or “Jan 2004” (without quotation marks). You might then put in the Date column a date which is a good guess at the true date. Openlaw’s Standard report form will then use the date in the Date column to fix where the document comes in a date order list but will display the contents of the Showdate column.

Bear in mind that Openlaw will do this sorting for you, so a lack of date order in the source Word list should not matter.