§ Guide, full text

The Complete Guide to eDiscovery and eDisclosure

A UK-first practitioner handbook on electronic disclosure for solicitors, barristers, in-house counsel, paralegals, investigators and litigation support teams. Part One sets out the vocabulary, the English rulebook, a topic by topic comparison with United States discovery and the ten stage lifecycle the rest of the guide follows. Part Two covers information governance and litigation readiness, when the duty to preserve arises, PD 57AD paragraph 4 step by step, hold notices and preservation letters, the evidence source map across eight source families, custodian tiers, control, and collection method, metadata, hashing and chain of custody. Part Three moves from data to disclosure: the processing pipeline and the settings that are really legal decisions, early case assessment, a seven step search method with hit reporting, the review protocol and quality control, technology assisted review and generative AI with the validation statistics and case law behind them, privilege and redaction, and production, inspection and authenticity. Part Four addresses special situations, documents held by non-parties, cross-border matters where US discovery meets UK data, data protection in disclosure including the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, costs and proportionality, choosing technology and providers, and forums beyond the High Court. Part Five is the working toolkit: worked examples, fifteen recurring mistakes, red flags, when to involve a digital forensic expert, forty questions to ask the client, the opponent and the provider, suggested wording for preservation advice, hold notices and DRD entries, a master checklist, a fifty term glossary and a full reference list. Law stated at 20 September 2026.

74 pages · 101 min read