In October 2010, new court rules came into effect in England and Wales which reinforced the importance the courts are placing on the disclosure of electronically stored evidence. In this article, Michael Axe assesses the effects of these new rules, and the dangers of ignoring them.
When the Civil Procedure Rules were first introduced in 1998, the relevance of Electronically Stored Information (ESI) was not at the forefront of anyone's minds. But as the way in which businesses operate has fundamentally changed over the course of the last decade, the Courts have had to develop new rules to deal with the avalanche of new technology that has become not only available, but commonplace.