Bundle generating services such as Bundledocs and eBrief Ready has a facility whereby you can grant direct read access to the other side so that they can log on and see the "bundle" of documents held in your account but you should not do this for the following reasons:
1. At any point in time you are likely to have some documents set in an "excluded" status - i.e. not to be included when a eBundle is generated. For example, normally a tribunal will direct witness statements to be exchanged at a date later than the main Disclosure of Documents stage and, as you do not want the other side to see your witness statements prematurely, you may, at some stage, have witness statements which are temporarily set to "excluded" so that they are omitted when sending a ZIP file of documents - e.g. at the Disclosure of Documents stage. But anybody who has direct read access can still see "excluded" documents.
2. The tribunal will direct one party to prepare the eBundle - to be used at the final hearing - in collaboration with the other party. If you, the eBundle-producing party, generate a draft eBundle and send it to the other side, and the other side confirm in writing that it includes all the documents they require, then there is a record of their agreement (in case there should be any dispute later about what was included in the eBundle). But if you were to grant the other side direct read access and simply invite them to log on and confirm that all the documents they require are present and have a status of "included", a dispute could arise later because there is no permanent record of exactly what documents there were in the system, with what status, at the point in time that the other side logged on and gave you their confirmation.
3. If you were to grant the other side direct read access, they might confirm that all required documents are included, based on the document names, but, later on when the eBundle is received, may say that a document described with a particular name is in fact a different document to what they were expecting and query what document was actually in the system when, earlier on, they logged on and gave you their confirmation. But if you had actually sent a draft eBundle then it will be possible to check back and see exactly what it contained.
4. The tribunal directions may actually require you, as part of the process of producing the eBundle, to provide a draft bundle index to the other side by a particular date and, if so, you do have to do that. Providing effectively the same information by giving the other side read access would not, in itself, comply with such a direction.
So, for all these reasons, you should not grant the other side direct read access to your bundling system.
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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 will not be applicable to every case: it is intended to be used only in conjunction with more specific advice to the individual client about the individual case. This information page should not be used by, or relied on, by anyone else.
This page was lasted updated in April 2024. Disclaimer