At a relatively early stage in the litigation process the court or other tribunal issues directions to the parties as to the various steps they need to take to prepare for the eventual Final Hearing (with a deadline for each step directed). The directions will include a method and timeline for "disclosure" of relevant documents. Often a tribunal will simply order that all relevant documents within the possession of each party are to be disclosed but in some courts the parties are first required to submit a disclosure report giving information about what documents there are at different "locations" and the time which might be required to search those locations. The exact information required to be in the disclosure report (called a "disclosure review document in the Business and Property Courts) varies with different courts. The court then decides exactly what disclosure directions to give - whether all locations listed which are under the control of each party should be searched, or only selected locations, whether some locations can initially be filtered by keyword or other automated means before a filtered set of documents is checked for relevance, etc. A party always has the option of doing more searching than the tribunal orders, but cannot do less. The information which would be in a disclosure report is likely to help a party keep track even if they are not actually required to submit it to the court.
If you have organised document copies as suggested here you will have document copies held in folders by each location under your control and you can easily check how many documents there are for each location which would need to be searched.
A "location" can be a physical location which might contain relevant documents, for example, a particular phone, or a physical photo album. If you have physical documents organised in labelled suspension files, then, instead of simply using "my filing cabinet" as the name of the location, it is useful to treat each labelled suspension file which contains possibly relevant documents as a separate "location" - e.g. 'Mr Jones' file in my filing cabinet.
Most devices store documents in folders which are in a hierarchy. The folder at the top of the hierarchy may be named simply Documents. It would be possible for every document to have simply been saved within a high-level folder named Documents without having any sub-folders, and this might be done on mobile devices where the total number of documents (other than photos) may be relatively few. But on a computer it is usual to have created create sub-folders for each subject or project in much the same way that a physical filing cabinet may contain a different labelled suspension file for each subject or project.
A folder or sub-folder, together with any sub-folders it may have, which may have relevant documents, can be considered to be a "location".
Sometimes documents are stored in different folders according to document type. For example on many devices there is a high level Pictures folder as well as a high-level Documents folder. Often the Pictures high level folder contains a sub-folder for each year and, within that, a sub-folder for each month. So although some photos relevant to a particular subject or project may in the past have been copied or moved to a sub-folder within Documents, so that they are conveniently available alongside other documents relating to that subject or project, some other photos relevant to a subject or project may be only available in sub-folders within the Pictures folder. So you may need to treat, for example Pictures/2023 and Pictures/2024 as additional locations.
Don't forget folders within your email system and any folders you have in "cloud" storage.
You can contact any external organisations you have engaged in the past who hold documents you are entitled to copies of (so that those documents are under your "control") - such as your conveyancing solicitors in a case concerning land - and, if you are not immediately obtaining copies of documents they hold, at least ask them to provide you with basic information about what they hold and the numbers and form of documents they hold (e.g. whether all computer files or whether partially in paper form).
There may be relevant documents held in public registers such as at the Land Registry. Although the parties, like everyone else, could obtain copies of documents from public registers, those documents are not considered to be in a party's possession and control (unless and until a party decides to download a copy of a particular document) so although a court can in exceptional circumstances order a party to ask a third party for documents, the court will not generally order parties to search and download from a public register. But, of course, a party may choose to look in a public register for documents and so, to be comprehensive, the disclosure report should list any public registers which the party actually proposes to search, and any other potential source of documents outside a party's control, which a party proposes to investigate, making clear that theses sources are outside the party's control and are listed on the report simply in order to give a full account of matters relevant to how long the disclosure process might take, and not because it is expected the court will make a compulsory order for disclosure of documents from that source.
Write down the information you have found out, as in the example below. If the report needs to be submitted to the court then at the time it is submitted you can add a column for the amount of time already taken in finding relevant documents in each location, and a column with an estimate of the further amount of time necessary to complete the search in that location, together with any other information required by the rules of the specific court.
Location Approx total Paper/card No relevant docs Whether all
no documents or Electronic already identified relevant docs
original? already identified
Mr Smith's Galaxy A37 phone - texts with Mr Jones 30 Electronic 25 Yes
Mr Smith's Galaxy A37 phone - other text messages 1,600 Electronic 0 No
Mr Smith's Galaxy A37 phone - JPG photos 430 Electronic 95 No
Mr Smith's Galaxy A37 phone - other files 100 Electronic 0 No
'Mr Jones' file in my filing cabinet 85 Paper 72 Yes
'Mr Philips's file in my filing cabinet 50 Paper 10 No
1973 extension project photo album 70 Card 23 Yes
Surface laptop - extension Drawings folder 30 Electronic 25 Yes
Surface laptop - other files 50,000 Electronic 0 No
Gmail - house extension folder 250 Electronic 0 No
Gmail - other email folders 2,500 Electronic 0 No
H.M. Land Registry (not under party's control) unknown Electronic 10 No
etc.
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 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.
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 July 2026. Disclaimer