Federal Court Guidelines on e-Discovery

The Federal Court of Australia issued "The use of technology in the management of discovery and the conduct of litigation" 29 January 2009 (Practice Note No 17). Justice Teague might also consider these of use for his royal commission into the Victorian brushfires. The guidelines set out the use of electronic documents in court proceedings. This is intended to be used a significant number of the documents in a case are electronic (usually 200 or more) and so handling them electronically will speed up the process and lower costs.

The Practice Note cites document provided on the court web site for:

1. Default Document Management Protocol for 200 to 5,000 e-documents,
2. Advanced Document Management Protocol for more that 5,000 documents,
3. Pre-Discovery Conference Checklist
4. Pre-Trial Checklist
   
5. Glossary