What is eDiscovery in Australia?

Australian litigation uses the term discovery (or disclosure in some jurisdictions) for the exchange of relevant documents between parties. eDiscovery is that same process applied to electronic material - email, chat and collaboration data, file shares, and mobile devices - which now makes up almost all discoverable material.

The process is governed by the rules of the court hearing the matter, such as the Federal Court Rules and the rules of the state and territory Supreme Courts. Australian courts actively encourage the efficient use of technology in discovery, and parties in larger matters typically agree on a document exchange protocol covering formats, metadata, and de-duplication before review begins.

A typical Australian eDiscovery workflow includes:

• Identifying and preserving potentially relevant data across custodians and systems

• Collecting it in a forensically sound way

• Processing and culling the set through de-duplication, date ranges, and search terms

• Reviewing for relevance, privilege, and confidentiality

• Exchanging documents in the agreed format with metadata intact

Two local considerations shape tool selection. First, proportionality: Australian courts expect discovery costs to stay proportionate to the matter, which is driving uptake of analytics and technology-assisted review. Second, privacy and data location: the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles govern how personal information is handled, and many Australian organisations prefer to know exactly where their data is hosted and processed before sending it to a review platform.

For a walkthrough of where AI now fits in this process, see How AI Fits into Modern eDiscovery.

Claira is an AI eDiscovery platform that applies classification, summarization, and fact extraction to large review sets. See how it works.