New Zealand is a common law jurisdiction requiring discovery of documents in broadly the same way as the UK, Australia, Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong and, at a little more distance, as the US. It is not necessarily a disadvantage that it has only now turned to considering what rules and procedures are necessary to manage electronic discovery.

The best source of information on New Zealand developments is the blog run by Andrew King of E-Discovery Consulting in Auckland. I knew Andrew a little when he was a law firm litigation support specialist in London, and met him again in Sydney last year when Senior Master Whitaker and I brought him up to date on the then developments on the eDisclosure Practice Direction and Electronic Documents Questionnaire which have since come into force in the UK.

I give you no analysis of my own, for now, but simply refer you to two posts by Andrew King. One, dated 14 July, is headed Final Draft of the New NZ Discovery Rules Released, which summarises the issues which had been addressed, and referred readers to the draft rules. Andrew has now produced a useful summary headed NZ eDiscovery Reform – a Global Context which does what the title implies and reviews developments in other jurisdictions.

I await developments in New Zealand with interest as part of my general self-imposed remit to keep up with developments in all the jurisdictions which are focusing on court-led eDiscovery. When the opportunity arises, I hope to go to New Zealand to find out more about what is happening there. Meanwhile, Andrew’s blog is a source to bookmark.

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