DATA TYPE AND LENGTH OF FIELD

Each document should be uniquely identified. The parties should agree upon a consistent format for capturing Document ID before discovery is commenced. Some suggestions for capture of Document ID are set out below.

The field may be broken into different components such as First Page and Last Page. The field or fields might comprise a 4 part number in the form of AAA.NNN.NNN.NNNN where "AAA" represents an alphabetic shorthand for the party name. The other 3 sets of numbers could be used to suit the convenience of the parties. It may be useful if the first set is used to refer to an archive box number, the second to the number of the folder within the box, and the third to the page number.

Consideration should be given to number those pages or documents that are accidentally omitted; a suffix may be added to the Document ID, for example, if a page has a Document IDXXX.001.001.0002 and a page has to be added, the added page Document ID may be XXX.001.001.0002_A.

The parties should consider whether each page should be individually numbered or agree on some other satisfactory arrangement. If agreement is not reached then the parties should seek the Court's direction.

If the parties agree not to number each page, consideration should be given to an additional field recording the number of pages in each document.

Attachments to documents may be separately listed and numbered. Attachments can be numbered sequentially following the host document. For example, if a host document was numbered XXX.001.001.0001 then its attachments would be numbered as XXX.001.001.0002, XXX.001.001.0003 and XXX.001.001.0004.

If documents are to be imaged, the parties may agree on additional information about document identification.

Some image file names may be restricted to a maximum of 8 characters; this may affect the Document ID structure if documents are to be imaged and image files are to be named identically to the Document ID.

Each attachment can be listed separately, with its own discovery number and details.

Suggested naming conventions for the Document Group field are:
HWA: Host with attachment
HNA:  Host no attachment
ATT:  Attachment

The Document Group field may be required if parties agree to exchange image files.

Date can be inserted as:
DD/MM/YYYY for example 05/09/1996 where DD = Day, MM = Month and YYYY = Year

If there is no way of ascertaining the date of the document, then the parties may agree upon what naming convention to use, for example, "Undated", or 00/00/0000, however, it should be noted that some database formats may not recognise these codes. 

It is suggested that documents with only the month and year (ie. August 1997) can be coded as 01/08/1997 and an entry made in the Estimated Date field.

Documents with the day and month but no year should be considered as undated documents. For example a document dated 04/04 will be coded as if it were undated.

The Estimated Date field should be left blank if a date is clearly evident on the document (for example 04/08/1963).

This field should be completed as "Yes" where the actual date of the document cannot be ascertained for certain.For example if a partial date is shown on the document (e.g. August 1979), the date has been stamped on, the date has been amended by hand or the only visible date is on a fax machine print out, then this field should be marked "Yes".

If a document contains what may be an original date as well as a subsequent date (possibly as a result of alterations being made to the document), it is suggested that the later date should be taken as the document date and the Estimated Date field should be left blank.

If, for example, a newspaper clipping has a handwritten date only, then it is suggested that the handwritten date should be recorded and that the Estimated Date field should marked "Yes".

Other options that may be considered for this field are:

• AFT = After
• BEF = Before
• MTH = Month
• ABT = About

The Document Typefield can be completed using commonly received document types, for example:  "Letter", "Memo", "Deed", "Coversheet".

Parties should endeavour to create a list of agreed Document Typesprior to discovery.

If the document has been faxed, this field can include "Facsimile".

If a group of documents is being discovered as a bundle, this field may be completed as "Bundle of Document Type".

The Privilege field identifies whether privilege has been claimed over the document. The permissible entries in this field are "Yes", "No", and "Part".

If this field is completed with "Yes", or "Part", the Privilege Basis field should also be completed.

The Author field identifies the person or persons who wrote the document.  This field should be completed using information on the face of the document.

It is important that names of persons be captured consistently and parties should agree on a consistent name capture format.  A suggested way to capture names is to use surname first, followed by the person's initial, for example, "Smith, A".  It is also important to ensure that people of the same name are not captured in different ways, for example, "Smith, A" may be Anthony Smith who is also called Tony:  there is a danger that this person may be captured as "Smith, T".

If a document has multiple Authors, then it is important to agree upon which separator symbols will be used.  For example, these names may be captured as "Brown J/Jones J ... " etc, or as "Brown J, Jones J..." etc. 

It is important to agree upon a the separator to be used; for example, if a comma is used as a separator, this may cause problems in some exchange formats such as comma delimited files.

The Author Organisation field captures the organisation from which the document was produced.  This field should be completed from the information on the face of the document.

The standard spellings and/or abbreviations to be used to identify Organisations should be agreed by the parties prior to document preparation being commenced.

It is important to agree on the correct separator to be used where there are multiple Author Organisations (see explanation in Author above)

The Addressee field identifies the person or persons to whom the document is addressed.  This field may include persons to whom copies are circulated.  This field is to be completed from information on the face of the document.

See explanation in Author above for a suggested way to capture names.

It is important to agree on the correct separator to be used where there are multiple Addressees (see explanation in Author above).

The Addressee Organisation field identifies the organisation to which the document is addressed.  This field is to be completed from information on the face of the document.

The standard spellings and/or abbreviations to be used to identify Addressee Organisationsshould be agreed by the parties prior to document preparation being commenced.

It is important to agree on the correct separator to be used where there are multiple Addressee Organisations; for example (see explanation in Author above).

The Parties field identifies the parties to an agreement or other legal document (not correspondence).

It is important to agree on the correct separator to be used where there are multiple Parties (see explanation in Author above).

Parties may find the Sourcefield useful to identify documents that have been obtained from someone other than the party making discovery; for example, documents that have been obtained on subpoena or through some other compulsory process of obtaining access to documents.

This field would identify the party from whom such documents were obtained.