Lord Woolf had no doubts about the mischief of the present regime for discovery.

Many hours and thousands of pounds of clients' money are routinely wasted on digging up and then ploughing through mounds of documents, few of which come to be relied on by either side at the trial.That mischief had to go.

The civil justice reforms substitute a new regime called 'disclosure' but much more than a change in name is involved.

There is a radical change in emphasis.

ProportionalityThe rule in Compagnie Financiere du Pacifique v Peruvian Guano Co [1882] 11 QBD 55 is abolished by part 31 of the Civil Proceedings Rules 1998 (CPR).

No longer is a party entitled to see a document which may lead fairly to a train of enquiry.In future, disclosure, on the fast and multi-tracks, will be subject to the CPR's overriding objective of dealing with cases justly.

The objective introduces concepts such as proportionality which has regard to the amount of money involved, the importance of the case, the complexity of the issues and the financial position of the parties.Standard disclosureUnder the CPR there is no automatic disclosure.

The court can, and probably will, order disclosure.

But if it is appropriate, the court can dispense with or limit the disclosure which takes place.In fact, the parties can come to their own agreement to this effect which might happen, for instance, where compliance with a pre-action protocol has itself resulted in the relevant disclosure taking place.Disclosure - and inspection arising out of it - may even take place in stages.

Any duty of disclosure continues until the proceedings are concluded.If an order is made, it will normally be for 'standard disclosure'.

That requires a party to disclose only the documents: -- on which the party relies;-- which adversely affect the party's own case;-- which adversely affect another party's case;-- which support another party's case;which the party is required to disclose by a relevant practice direction.The personal injury pre-action protocol gives a good indication of what, in practice, might be expected from standard disclosure in certain categories of cases.For example, in a highway tripping case the protocol requires the highway authority to disclose - going back 12 months before the accident - the records of inspection, maintenance records, minutes of meetings where the maintenance or repair policy has been discussed, records of complaints about the state of the highway and records of other accidents on the relevant stretch of highway.The searchBut how far should a party be expected to search for documents? The party has to conduct a 'reasonable search' for the documents required by standard disclosure which are or have been in that party's control.

In determining the extent of the search, account is to be taken of the number of documents involved, the nature and complexity of the proceedings, the ease and expense of retrieval of any particular document and the significance of any document which is likely to be located during the search.

The practice direction which accompanies part 31 of the CPR says it may be reasonable to decide not to search for documents coming into existence before a particular date or to limit the search to documents falling into particular categories.The courts might face an avalanche of applications as the profession works out what the new regime really does mean.

If a solicitor is acting for a large corporate client, is it reasonable to search for relevant documents in all of the company's offices? Almost certainly not but where do the boundary lines lie?Discl osure statementThe procedure for standard disclosure will normally involve serving the other party with a list of documents.

As now, there will be a standard form, N265.

But the disclosure has to be accompanied with a disclosure statement signed not by the party's solicitor but by the actual party in these terms - 'I state that I have carried out a reasonable and proportionate search to locate all the documents which I am required to disclose under the order made by the court on .

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I did not search for documents; (1) predating .

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,(2) located elsewhere than .

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,(3) in categories other than .

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.I certify that I understand the duty of disclosure and to the best of my knowledge I have carried out that duty.

I certify that the list .

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is a complete list of all documents which are or have been in my control and which I am obliged under the order to disclose.'The more complex the issue of disclosure in any particular case, the more problems that disclosure statement will raise.Disclosure on the fast track needs to take place only four weeks after allocation and it is within that timescale that the client needs to sign the disclosure statement.Specific disclosureThe court can order specific disclosure or specific inspection.

Not only might such an order relate to specific documents or classes of documents but there is also power to order that a specific search be carried out.

In deciding whether to make an order, the court will take all the circumstances of the case into account as well as the overriding objective.How relevant are the specific documents to the issues involved in the case? Can the expense of specific disclosure be justified? It will be up to the solicitor making the application for specific disclosure to convince the court it has merit.Not only will unsuccessful applications result in the losing party paying costs - summarily assessed - immediately but the court could order one party to pay the other party's costs of any subsequent search.

The courts will be adopting a no-nonsense approach.InspectionAs now, privileged documents may not be inspected.

But a party can also refuse inspection where the cost of allowing it would be disproportionate to the issues in the case.

It will be back, again, to the overriding objective for the factors which the court will take into account in deciding whether to agree.And also .

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.Part 31 of the CPR deals with pre-action disclosure, orders for disclosure against a non-party and public interest privilege cases.

Privileged documents inadvertently inspected by the other party may only be used with the permission of the court.The present rules on the subsequent use of disclosed documents continue.

If a document has not been disclosed, it cannot be used in court unless the court gives permission; I venture to suggest that such permission will be harder to obtain after 26 April than it has been to date.