That’s a rather random pairing of countries, you might say from looking at my heading.  We are all in favour of cutting down the number of your blog posts, you might go on, but there are better ways of doing that than randomly shoving apparently unconnected jurisdictions into one article.

One connection between Ireland and New Zealand is that both jurisdictions require discovery of documents for litigation. Another, a subset of the first, is that they are both late to the eDiscovery party – of the relevant, common law countries, only Scotland has positively decided (in a report last year) that the wheels of civil justice can keep turning without any  recognition in the rules that the management of electronic data and documents requires particular attention. The rest of us to a greater (the US) or lesser (Hong Kong) extent have either tried to address discovery problems or have at least recognised that there are problems which go to the heart of delivering justice. One policy consideration here is that justice which no one can afford is justice denied. Another is that some dispute resolution business is portable between jurisdictions, and it is the high-value litigants who can often choose where to fight.

New Zealand has a draft practice direction almost ready to roll out early next year.  The New Zealand Bar Association Annual Conference last week gave over part of its time to a session on electronic discovery. My source, as before in relation to New Zealand, is the NZ eDiscovery Blog run by Andrew King of eDiscovery Consulting. In his latest post Raising the Bar – a look at the NZBA Annual Conference, Andrew summarises his own presentation, and refers in positive terms to a talk by Judge Harvey. I met Judge Harvey at the recent Electronic Litigation Conference in Singapore, and introduced him in turn to Senior Master Whitaker and to Vince Neicho of Allen and Overy, all three of us members of the working party which drafted our recent EDisclosure Practice Direction.

Here is another example, then, of opportunities to share ideas between those who are at different stages in the game. New Zealand has the enormous advantage of watching the rest of us develop our ideas, and we in turn will learn from their experiences. If you ask me why I spend so much of my time on aeroplanes, this is part of my answer.

The week which brings the report of these New Zealand discussions brings also news of Ireland’s first eDiscovery conference. Called eDiscovery Ireland 2011, it takes place at Dun Laoghaire, Dublin on 6 and 7 October. The conference is being organised by Cernam, a Dublin-based company specialising in online evidence and investigations. I met its managing director, Owen O’Connor, at CEIC a couple of years ago and we met again at ILTA last month. He kindly asked me to speak at the Dublin conference, where my subject is the Status of eDiscovery in the UK and other Common Law Countries. I am really looking forward to what will be my first visit to Dublin in more than 25 years.

Discovery in Ireland is much more limited than in England and Wales and its rules reflect that.  The idea of limited discovery sounds great until it comes up against the brute fact that those who litigate have as many documents as those from anywhere else, and that that is where the evidence often lies. Like New Zealand, Ireland has the opportunity to shape the rules which it needs, accepting or rejecting those of other jurisdictions.  It is a privilege to be invited to survey the common-law world in this context.

I will be in good company. Browning Marean of DLA Piper US will speak on US eDiscovery, adding yet another to the countries in which we have spoken together. Barry Vitou of Pinsent Masons will talk about the UK Bribery Act – he and I have done double-acts on this subject and are booked to do so again, in Paris in November. Stephen Mason, UK barrister and editor of the LexisNexis book Electronic Evidence (to which I contributed) will speak on that subject as he did at the recent Singapore conference. We outsiders are there to support Ireland’s home grown authorities on a subject which is seen as increasingly important.

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