Basically, the Practice Note makes electronic discovery mandatory for any matter with over 200 documents, effectively covering all Federal Court litigation larger than a simple injunction. Cases are broken into two categories, "basic" with 200 to 5000 documents being discovered and "advanced" with 5000 plus documents.
Simple cases will require the parties to discover all documents in searchable PDF format, with a unique number on each page and the document type, date and title being included in an electronic list of documents.
The advanced category of matters involves the parties reaching agreement on file types, folder structure and other matters and may involve the negotiation of a document exchange protocol.
The move makes electronic discovery the norm rather than the exception and while not having a great impact on the large law firms may cause some discomfort in the mid-end of town.
The Practice Note is still in draft although it is expected to be put in effect within the next few months. You can find the note and a variety of supporting documents at the Federal Court's site here (which really must win the award for the most obscure URL for a government body):
http://www.dev.azuredemoecourt.com/eToolkit/
For those looking for a more detailed discussion on the Practice Note, Law In Order have produced a good white paper which can be found here:
http://www.lawinorder.com.au/whitepaper.htm
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