IntroductionUsing DCS now that litigation has startedEverything you send or receive during the course of the 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 litigation process itself (i.e. formal litigation documents and correspondence about the case), you will be sent by the other party, at the Disclosure of Documents stage, copies of their documentary evidence – e.g. photographs or documents which came into existence in the ordinary course of events in the past such as letters, invoices, written agreements, emails, diaries, logs etc. which are probative of issues in dispute in the litigation. These items of documentary evidence should be stored in as separate DCS “case” as should your own documentary evidence which you will be disclosing. A word about terminology. The whole of the litigation is referred to as a "case" and the court 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 case. Storing the above documents in DCS in the way described not only allows you to find key important documents quickly but also means that you can use the DCS system to generate a Disclosure list (at the Disclosure of Documents stage) automatically and, most importantly, will allow you to deal with the process of the production of a Trial Bundle. Because the process of production of the Trial Bundle is a collaborative task between the parties, and the other party might be inefficient, it is essential to have all documents which might need to be included in the Trial Bundle ready in Caselines so that, if necessary, the Trial Bundle (or a Supplementary Trial Bundle if the other side is producing the Trial Bundle and refuses to include documents you require) can be produced quickly in time to meet the deadline for delivery which will normally be a week or two before the trial. Don't give me access to your cloud storageThe 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. Now that litigation is continuing, 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 and relevant documentary evidence, in DCS as explained below under Organising documents in Caselines DCS. You will be granting me access to the DCS Pleadings, Orders and Witness Statements case, Offers and Comments on Statements case and Documentary Evidence cases, as described below, so that I can use them 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 will be to the DCS Pleadings, Orders and Witness Statements and Offers and Comments on Statements and Offers cases and documentary evidence cases that I will be turning to when carrying out each piece of work. Apart from saving costs, a further reason why I use the documents in the DCS Documentary Evidence cases (and not your cloud storage) is that if key documents have been accidentally missed out of the DCS Documentary Evidence cases I am more likely to spot that if that is what I am working from. It is always your responsibility to ensure that the DCS Documentary Evidence cases (together with the DCS Pleadings, Orders and Witness Statements case for certain key litigation documents such as pleadings and court orders which are not actually documentary evidence) contain everything which will be needed at trial, and you should not rely on me happening to spot something missing, but if I work from the DCS documents that has the advantage that I might spot that something is missing if it happens be be something I am looking for as part of the particular piece of work I am doing at that point. When asking me to carry out each piece of work as the litigation proceeds, or in answering any questions I may have for you when I come to do each piece of work, there might be some additional document which you wish to show me and if, for example, the document is a recently received letter and it is not yet clear that that document is a relevant evidential document which needs to be used at trial - and so you have not yet loaded the document into the appropriate location in DCS - you might attach the document as a PDF to an email you send to me. Some people, particularly for large documents, find it more convenient to provide a temporary link rather than actually attaching the document to their email, and a temporary link to a specific document in your cloud storage in these circumstances is fine, but please do not grant me general access to your cloud storage. Ensuring that I do not have access to your cloud storage will remind you that it is your responsibility to ensure that the DCS Pleadings, Orders and Witness Statements and Offers and Comments on Statements cases are up to date with the key documents they are designed to hold (but no other documents) and that all relevant disclosed documents (but only relevant documents) are in the DCS documentary evidence cases. Organising documents in Caselines DCSIn the Caselines Digital Case System (DCS) groups of documents are organised into what are called cases and, within each case, documents are further divided into sections. As shown below, you will initially need to create four DCS cases for your court case. How to load documents to DCS is explained here. The documents to be stored in each DCS case are shown in the tables below. As well as making sure you do store the key formal litigation documents in the correct sections in the Pleadings, Orders and Witness Statements case as soon as you send or receive them, it is equally important that you do not store, in a DCS 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 Pleadings, Orders and Witness Statements 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 - Pleadings, Orders and Witness Statements caseChoose the No Page Numbers option and untick Include Front Page and Index in Complete Bundle in the Master Bundle options for this case This case, which contains your documentary evidence, has one section with a section letter of C, if you are the Claimant, or D if you are the Defendant. Usually each document has a bates number prefix. The first document, for example, would have a prefix of C1 or D1.
Choose the No Page Numbers option and untick Include Front Page and Index in Complete Bundle in the Master Bundle options for this case Audio and Video file placeholdersYour documentary evidence includes not only written documents but also any relevant audio or video files (e.g. mp3 and mp4 files). You should store copies of these on cloud storage. Google Drive is a very convenient (and free) cloud storage system though you should note that it, like Gmail and all other Google systems, is hosted outside the United Kingdom and so may not be subject to the same data protection standards as apply within the United Kingdom. For each video or audio file, create a one page placeholder, select Get Shareable Link, and paste the link into the placeholder page so that the placeholder page looks something like this:  then store only the placeholder file in the My Documentary Evidence case. Note: the reason why you should load any audio/video files to e.g. Google Drive (with just a placeholder page, containing a link, loaded to the My Documentary Evidence DCS case) rather than loading the audio/video files themselves to the My Documentary Evidence DCS case, is as follows. There can be serious consequences of not disclosing documents you should have disclosed. For example you may be barred from using, at trial, a document which is important to your case if you have not disclosed it by the deadline directed by the court. If there is a dispute about exactly what you disclosed and when, you need to be able to check and prove what was disclosed. If copies of documents have been provided to the other side only by giving them read access to the My Documentary Evidence DCS case, and inviting them to log on to that DCS case and download any documents they require copies of, it can sometimes be difficult to difficult to prove, later on, what was provided and when. At the time when the dispute arises you can see what the My Documentary Evidence DCS case then contains but what did it contain months earlier when you gave the other side read access, and at what point did they actually check it and download documents from it? To avoid these problems, you should not grant the other side read access to the My Documentary Evidence DCS case. This means that the audio/video files you allow them to read/download must be elsewhere - in Google Drive - accessible by clicking a link which you have pasted into a placeholder page in My Documentary Evidence DCS case. That placeholder page, which click-able link, will be disclosed, together with all the other documents in the My Documentary Evidence DCS, case when you download them in bulk as a bookmarked PDF and send them to the other side at the Disclosure of Documents stage. Smith v Jones - Documentary Evidence Disclosed by Other Side caseThis case is for documents you have recently received from the other party (or their solicitors) as part of disclosure (voluntary or compulsory) Note: If the other side have provided copies of the disclosed documents in PDF form, one PDF per document with suitable names, it may be simpler to load them all, rather than check which ones are exactly identical (e.g. without extra annotations) to ones you already have, but if there are a large number of documents provided in less convenient form (e.g. on paper or all in a single PDF without suitable bookmarks) most of which are identical to ones you already have, it may be easier to first check them against your documents (in the My Documentary Evidence case) and only load up those which are additional or different. In this case the DCS case should be renamed Smith v Jones - Additional Documentary Evidence Disclosed by the Other Side. The main section in this case is identified by the letter C (if the other side is the Claimant) or D (if the other side is the Defendant).
Usually each document has an bates number prefix. The first document, for example, would have a prefix of C1 or D1. Some courts allow or require the parties to attach certain key items of documentary evidence as an appendix to their pleadings at the start of the case. Even if a party has provided documents at the start of the case in an appendix it is good practice, for completeness, for those documents to still be included in the party's Disclosure List (at the Disclosure of Documents stage) but, in case this is not done, you should create a section CX (if the other side are the Claimant) or DX (if the other side are the Defendant) in the Documentary Evidence Disclosed by Other Side case and store those documents there. Audio and Video filesIf the documents disclosed by the other side include any audio or video files (e.g. mp3 and mp4 files) you should store the audio/video itself on cloud storage such as Google Drive and create your own placeholder page with a link and store just that placeholder page in the Documentary Evidence Disclosed by Other Side DCS case. When doing this create one placeholder page for each video or audio file, select Get Shareable Link, and paste the link for the video/audio file into the placeholder page so that the placeholder page looks something like this: Remember that:-
How to Arrange Your ExhibitsIf a document is to be used as evidence in a court then, unless the rules made special provision, the normal starting point would be that every document has to be vouched for by a witness who gives evidence saying what the document is. This, however, would be hugely inconvenient and time-consuming, so, fortunately, the Civil Procedure Rules contain provisions which should mean that for the vast majority of documents, this is not necessary. For example, in most cases each party is required to disclose in advance the documents it will (or may) use at the trial and if the other party does not admit the authenticity of a disclosed document they have to serve notice of that, otherwise they a deemed to admit authenticity. This means that the vast majority of documents do not need to be exhibited by a witness but can simply be referred to, as necessary, in the witness statement, by some obvious identifying feature (e.g. "the email from from John Smith to Peter Jones timed at 13.10 on 10 July 2017"). There are, however, some instances where it is necessary or desirable for specific documents to be exhibited by a witness: 1. If the authenticity of a document is disputed it will need to be exhibited by a witness who can speak to its authenticity (e.g. a witness who wrote and sent a letter can give evidence of that, exhibiting a copy of the letter). 2. Photographs should normally be exhibited. This is partly because there is often no convenient way of identifying a photograph other than by exhibiting it. Also evidence is needed of when the photo was taken and what it is a photo of 3. Some other documents may not contain obvious identifying features - e.g. a unsigned undated handwritten note - and these also need to be exhibited 4. If a witness statement is used to support an application (i.e. a short court hearing before the eventual trial) it will normally need to exhibit every evidential document it refers to. This is because applications are heard quickly and there is no formal "disclosure process" or "agreeing trial bundle" process by which the other party could be deemed to admit authenticity of documents When assembling Exhibits sight should not be lost of how documents will eventually, at trial, be arranged in a Trial Bundle and referred to. The Exhibits may be in a section at the end of the Trial bundle, for reference, but generally copies of individual documents will also need to be in chronological sections and it is the copy of the document in the chronological section which will generally be referred to at trial, so documents in the chronological sections need to be readily identifiable without having to refer to the Exhibits section. In the case of documents such as emails and letters, the document itself identifies what it is, but this is not the case for photographs (2 above) of for other documents without an obvious feature (3 above) and in the case of disputed authenticity (1 above), whilst the document may purport to identify itself, that is in dispute. Taking all this into account, generally the best way of arranging Exhibits is as follows:- Photographs (category 2 above) exhibited by you or another witness should be in a single Exhibit with each photograph having a page number at the bottom centre prefixed by the Exhibit mark. E.g. if the Exhibit mark is JJS1, the first photo in the Exhibit should be marked bottom centre with JJS1-01, the next photo JJS1-02, etc. Each page of the Exhibit would be in an individual PDF named - e.g.
Documents which would not normally be exhibited but are Exhibited only because of an application (category 4 above) would generally be in a separate Exhibit in chronological order all as a single PDF or, in some cases, where there are different categories of documents, perhaps two or three Exhibits, each a single PDF, named - e.g.
There will, of course, be an individual PDF copy (without a bottom centre prefixed pagination mark) of every document which is Exhibited by you or one of your witnesses, in the My Documentary Evidence case. All documents from the My Documentary Evidence case will be copied to the chronological Photographs and Other Documents sections of the Complete set of Case Documents for Trial case (see below) but, in addition, copies of photographs with bottom centre prefixed pagination mark which make up photo Exhibits already in the Exhibits section, will be placed in the chronological Photographs section. This allows a photograph with pagination mark to be selected for inclusion in the chronological Photographs section of the Trial Bundle, when this is eventually produced, rather than including the copy of the photo which does not have the pagination mark, so that when a witness statement refers to an exhibited photograph by pagination mark e.g. "The photograph of the garden marked JJS1-07" the photograph referred to can be identified in the chronological Photographs section of the Trial Bundle without having to refer to copy in the Exhibits section. Smith v Jones - Complete set of Case Documents for Trial caseInitially it is important to have the My Documentary Evidence case separate from other DCS cases so that it can be used at the Disclosure of Documents stage but, once the further stage of Exchange of Witness Statements has been reached and passed, it is convenient to rename the Pleadings, Orders and Witness Statements case to be named Complete set of Case Documents for Trial and for extra sections to be created in it for the documentary evidence (both documentary evidence from the My Documentary Evidence case and the Documents Disclosed by Other Side case. The documents from the latter two cases are then copied into the new sections in the Complete set of Case Documents for Trial case. The following Bundle settings should be used for this case: Page Number Position in the Bundle - Right Page Stamping Colour - Red Section Numbering Restarts in the Bundle - ticked Display Document Dates in the Index - ticked Display Section Numbers in the Index - ticked Include Front Page and Index in Complete Bundle - ticked Include Front Pages and Indexes in each Section - untickedIf it is the other side, rather than you, which has been directed to assemble a trial bundle, you will need to tell the other side what documents you require to be included in it and in practice this is best done by creating a DCS bundle named Smith v Jones – Documents for inclusion in Trial Bundle. Important Note It is important that you do not store, in the DCS cases and sections shown above, documents which do not belong there. If, for example, you were to store every piece of correspondence sent or received, in sections 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. Extra DCS Cases for Hearing BundlesAs explained above, a Trial Bundle - to be used at the trial at the end of the case - is created from the above DCS case by ticking/unticking the Included box for documents as appropriate. If there are other short court hearings before the trial, you may need, when the time comes, to create a new and separate DCS case specifically to produce a bundle for a particular short court hearing. During the course of litigation, before the eventual trial, one side or the other might make an application to the court for an interim order to, for example, preserve the status quo or give temporary relief pending the trial. In this situation an application hearing bundle would be produced by creating a new and separate DCS case, to contain the documents required just for that hearing (may be copied from the above DCS case). As well as specific applications made to the court which are in some sense contentious, there may be, early on in the litigation, a case management hearing - usually called a Case Management Conference or CMC - which is more administrative in nature and may be concerned with giving directions about how the parties are to prepare, over the coming months, for the eventual trial, setting appropriate deadlines for each step. To save costs in cases where the directions are likely to be relatively straightforward, the court may simply read each party's proposed directions (which each party submits with the Directions Questionnaire) and issue directions without holding a case management hearing (if this happens the parties usually have the right, upon receiving the order giving the directions, to ask the court to re-consider). If there is to be a hearing a short hearing bundle will be required. If the court is going to decide "on the papers" without a hearing, the court may still require the claimant to assemble and lodge a bundle for the judge's/master's use when making the decision on the papers because that is quicker and easier to use than looking through the court file. All bundles should be kept intact after the hearings they were produced for because although an application or a CMC results in a court order because, although it is normally only the order which needs subsequently to be referred to, occasionally it happens that some occurrence in the future means that some document used in the earlier application hearing or directions hearing, which is not contained in the other DCS cases, needs to be consulted. Once the trial has ended and the judge has pronounced judgment, that it normally the end of the litigation (barring any enforcement action which may be necessary, and any assessment of costs if that was not carried out at the end of the trial) but occasionally one side or the other may appeal to a higher court and, in that case, a new and separate DCS case is set up to produce an appeal bundle. Sometimes it is agreed that there will be a formal mediation, conducted by a professional mediator, to see if a settlement is possible, and, if there is a mediation, usually a mediation bundle is produced, to be used by the parties and the mediator, by setting up a new and separate DCS case. Smith v Jones - Comments on Statements caseThis case is for confidential notes and documents which will be used by your barrister at trial but which are not to be included in the Trial Bundle.
Choose the No Page Numbers option and untick Include Front Page and Index in Complete Bundle in the Master Bundle options for this case Smith v Jones - For Costs Arguments caseThis case is for documents which might be used in arguments about costs at the end of a hearing once the judge has given judgment.As well as the Master Bundle, a sub-bundle named OPEN should be created containing all the documents for all sections except the WOP section. The Bundle Settings for both Master bundle and OPEN sub-bundle should be set as follows Page Number Position in the Bundle - Right Page Stamping Colour - Red Section Numbering Restarts in the Bundle - ticked Display Document Dates in the Index - ticked Display Section Numbers in the Index - ticked Include Front Page and Index in Complete Bundle - ticked Include Front Pages and Indexes in each Section - unticked A hardcopy bundle is then created as follows: 1. Print out the entire OPEN sub-bundle 2. Print just the WOP section from the Master Bundle. 3. File the pages of the WOP section after all the pages printed from the OPEN sub-bundle The above procedure results in a bundle having a main index at the front which lists documents in all sections except the WOP section. The purpose in doing this is as follows. The general idea of a Costs Arguments bundle is that it should not need to be used until after the judge has given judgment (decided who wins) but occasionally some documents in it may need to be shown to the judge before judgment. However the documents in the WOP section must not be seen by the judge until after judgment. By excluding the documents in the WOP section from the index it is possible, if necessary, to remove the WOP documents (each one of which will be identified by the letters WOP in red as part of the page number on the bottom right) and for the remainder of the bundle - including the main index - to be seen by the judge. Important Note: The above DCS case is not for documents which may be useful for assessment of costs (deciding how much a party ordered to pay costs should pay) but for documents which may be relevant to arguments about who should pay costs or whether they should pay the costs (whatever they are after assessment) for the whole period of the litigation or for a particular part of the litigation. An example of documents stored here would be correspondence pointing out that a party's conduct in the litigation process itself has unnecessarily increased costs. Interim costs schedules (if there are any) are included in the case only for the purpose of giving a rough assessment of the proportion of costs incurred at different stages of the litigation process (not for the purposes of assessment of costs). Saving PDF copies of Bundles As explained above, whenever there is a court hearing a hearing bundle will need to be produced, either by you or by the other side. If the hearing bundle is produced by you using Caselines DCS it will be produced in PDF form before it is printed and you should save the bundle PDF (on your computer or in cloud storage). Although, once used for a hearing, a 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 FoldersVirtually 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 and asking me to advise you. 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.
Paper files you should keepOriginal signed formal litigation documentsThe original signed copies of court documents which have been filed/served (e.g. pleadings and witness statements) should be kept in a paper file in case the court should require them to be produced. Disclosure Documentation in two ring bindersYou should also keep paper copies of all disclosure documentation (both documentation received on paper and documentation received electronically) in two ring binders . DisclaimerThis 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 |