Organising Documents on Caselines DCS for an Appeal or Review

Everything you send or receive during the course of the appeal or review litigation, including both correspondence about the case and formal litigation documents, will be automatically stored in your email system, but you will find that, as litigation proceeds over many months, you will end up with a large number of emails in your email system, so, whenever you receive, or send out, a key formal litigation document, you should store a copy of it in the appropriate location in Caselines Digital Case System (DCS), as described below, so that you can easily locate these important documents when needed as the case proceeds, and not have to search for them in your email system.

In addition to what is created by the appeal or review litigation process itself (i.e. formal litigation documents and correspondence about the case), you will have documents from the court/tribunal/administrative body which is being appealed from/reviewed. If you used DCS before, for the matter now being appealed/reviewed, you will still have those DCS cases and the documents in them. If you did not use DCS before then selected documents from the court/tribunal case or administrative decision below would be stored in a DCS case now. 

A word about terminology. The whole of the litigation is referred to as a "case" and the court/tribunal will allocate a case number. But the DCS system also uses the word "case" to refer to a collection of documents (from which, if necessary, a "bundle" can easily be produced). So there will be several DCS cases for your single court/tribunal case.  

Storing the above documents in DCS in the way described not only allows you to find key important documents quickly.

the DCS system is where I will look, from now on once you have set it up, for certain key documents as the litigation proceeds and you ask me to carry out work at each stage. It would not be cost-effective for me to search through your cloud storage, so don't give me access to your cloud storage, but instead you should put copies of the key documents, in DCS as explained below. 

You will be granting me access to the DCS Case Management case, as described below, so that I can use it for reference each time you ask me to do the next piece of work as the litigation proceeds. I do not need access to your own cloud storage such as Google Drive - indeed it it best if you do not grant me access to your own cloud storage as, because of the way the human mind works, if I have access to your cloud storage you may start to think - perhaps subconsciously - that when doing each piece of work you ask me to do, I will be considering everything contained in your cloud storage when, in fact, it is only the documents in the DCS Case Management case which I will be considering (together with any email message and attachments you provide to me at the point where you ask me to carry out the next piece of work in your case). Ensuring that I do not have access to your cloud storage will remind you that it is your responsibility to ensure that the DCS Case Management case is up to date with the key documents it is designed to hold (but no other documents).        

Organising documents in Caselines DCS

In the DCS system, groups of documents are organised into what are called cases and, within each case, documents can be further divided into sections. As shown below, you will initially need to create one DCS case, and you may need, later on, to create further cases to produce bundles for the final hearing and for any other hearings. How to load documents is explained here.

The documents to be stored in the DCS Case Management case are shown in the table below. As well as making sure you do store the key formal litigation documents in the correct sections in the Case Management case as soon as you send or receive them, it is equally important that you do not store, in a section, a document which does not belong there. If, for example, you were to store every piece of correspondence sent or received, into the sections of the Case Management intended for formal litigation documents, “just in case”, that would defeat the object because the important documents would be lost among the mass of more routine correspondence.


Smith v Jones - Case Management case

Name of Section  Order by What documents should be stored in it

Claim or Appeal Documents

  
Date

 These are the documents, drafted by each side's barrister, which set out what each party contends for. They may be named, Notice of Appeal, Appellant's Notice, Response, Claim Form, etc.

Claim Form                                                                 30 Jan 16 

Questionnaires

 
Date

 Questionnaires and any documents filed with them such as case summaries. 

Questionnaire – Claimant                                            25 Feb 16

Questionnaire – Defendant                                           26 Feb 16

Orders

 
Date

 Orders made by the court/tribunal (e.g. about how the parties are to prepare for the final hearing) and notices issued by the court or tribunal such as a Notice of Hearing - e.g.

Order                                                                            27 Feb 16

 Orders below





    If this is an appeal from a judgment at the end of a trial then the judgment/reasons for decision and the order made below are stored here. If this is an appeal from, or review of, the decision of an administrative body then the decision of the administrative body is stored here.

 If there have been several levels of decision, for example if the current case is an appeal from the decision of a planning inspector made on appeal from a local authority, or an appeal from the decision of a court or tribunal which was itself made on appeal from a court/tribunal below it, then there would be separate sections for each level.
      

 Other Relevant Documents

    Documents relevant to the grounds of appeal/ grounds for review such as documents or reports considered by the court/tribunal/administrative body below. 

 Offers

  
Date		  
All offers from one party to the other (whether open offers, Part 36 offers, without prejudice except as to costs offers, or Calderbank offers) and any responses (e.g. explaining why an offer is not accepted, requesting further information, etc). If one party proposes mediation but mediation does not take place then the letter proposing mediation and any reply declining mediation.

Letter Defendant to Claimant                                        28 Feb 15

NB Offers and responses which are unqualifiedly without prejudice (i.e. without prejudice rather than without prejudice except as to costs) are not stored here.

Initial letters proposing/or refusing mediation are normally without prejudice except as to costs and so would be stored here, but any documents produced during, or in preparation for, mediation itself will be unqualifiedly without prejudice (even if they do not explicitly say so) and are not stored here.  

Important Note It is important that you do not store, in the sections shown above, documents which do not belong there. If, for example, you were to store every piece of correspondence sent or received, into the sections of the Case Management case intended for formal litigation documents, “just in case”, that would defeat the object because the important documents would be lost among the mass of more routine correspondence. You may need, when the times comes, to create a bundle containing documents directly relating to a particular forthcoming hearing but this should be done by creating a new and separate DCS case, to contain the documents required for that hearing (some of which may be copied from the above sections), not by adding documents to the above sections which do not belong there.


DCS Cases for Hearings

As well as the DCS case shown above – which is for general reference throughout the case - you may need, when the times comes, to create a DCS case specifically to produce a bundle for the final hearing or for one or more shorter hearings before the final hearing. Hearing bundles produced by you using Caselines DCS will be produced in PDF form before they are printed and you should save each bundle PDF (on your computer or in cloud storage). Although, once used for a hearing, a case bundle should be kept intact and unchanged in DCS, there is always the possibility of it being changed by mistake (you might amend it by mistake when you intended to update one of the general reference cases for example), so you should retain the bundle PDF as it was when you printed it out and created the hardcopy bundle, so that for each hearing you have an exact copy of what the hardcopy bundle contained. 

 

Organising Your Email Folders

Virtually all correspondence you send or receive in the course of litigation will be automatically stored in your email system. This even includes much correspondence received by post because some of that you will be emailing that to me to ask me to advise. Likewise you will be emailing to me PDF copies of any signed letters you send out by post which you have asked me to draft. Because searchable email folders are so convenient, people sometimes, even if they have no other reason to send by email, scan things in as PDFs and email them to themselves so that they can store them in a convenient email folder. For example if you receive an invoice for a disbursement by post, you could scan it in, email it to yourself, and store it in the CostsDisbursementsEvidence folder (as well as keeping the paper original).  

I would suggest that you have a high-level folder for emails relating to the case (named - e.g. Smith v Jones) to keep them separate from other emails, such as your personal emails, and that below that high-level folder you have at least the following sub-folders.    


 Service 

 Any emails from me advising how to validly file and serve formal documents. Also any correspondence sent by you or received by you which notifies an address for service or a change of address for service of formal documents (including any correspondence notifying a change of solicitor representing the other party). Any notification by the court of a change of address of the court centre dealing with the case. 

 ServiceEvidence

  Evidence of how and when you served particular documents on parties. This includes both documents provided to you by others - such as a certificate of posting provided by the Post Office - and Certificates of Service which you complete and sign. 
 

 Advices

 Opinions and Advices written by me.

 Settlement

 Correspondence between parties which aims to achieve a settlement. 
 

 CostsStatements 

 Costs budgets, estimates of costs, and statements of costs filed by either party as the case proceeds. Also Disclosure Reports (giving estimate of costs of disclosure of documents).

 CostsDisbursementsEvidence

 Supporting evidence of disbursements in the case. 

This may include invoices from barristers, mediators and from any commercial document scanning or printing service you use, and for court fees. 

 CostsOther

 Most people, in order to increase the likelihood of the trial judge carrying out a (fast) summary assessment of costs at the end of the trial will put forward a Statement of Costs for Summary Assessment at the trial which just includes disbursements (on the basis that if it includes small items as well the judge may be more inclined to order the long and costly process of Detailed Assessment for which a specialist Costs Lawyer would need to be engaged). However if, for whatever reason, Detailed Assessment is ordered normally information about all expenditure (not just Disbusements) is provided to the Costs Lawyer and to cater for this possibility all emails relevant to expenditure, however small, can be stored here. 
   

 CostsBehaviour

 Any correspondence in which one party accuses the other of unreasonable litigation behaviour. Most cases are about behaviour which could be described as unreasonable but if the way a party behaves in the litigation itself is unreasonable (e.g. missing deadlines or bombarding the other party with long repetitive emails) relevant emails would be stored here as they may be relevant to the order the court eventually makes about who should pay the costs of the litigation itself. 

 


Paper Files you should keep

The original signed copies of court/tribunal documents which have been filed/served (e.g. Claim Form or Appellant's Notice) should be kept in a paper file in case the court/tribunal should require them to be produced.



Disclaimer

This information page is designed to be used only by clients of John Antell who have entered into an agreement for the provision of legal services. The information in it is necessarily of a general nature and is intended to be used only in conjunction with specific advice to the individual client about the individual case. This information page should not be used by, or relied on, by anyone else.

The information on this page about specific computer techniques is provided for information purposes only. Every reasonable effort has been made to ensure that the information is accurate and up to date at the time it was written but no responsibility for its accuracy, or for any consequences of relying on it, is assumed by me. You should satisfy yourself, before using any of the techniques, software or services described, that the techniques are appropriate for your purposes and that the software or service is reliable.

This page was lasted updated in June 2018 Disclaimer