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Prior to the CPR the test under the rules was that any document "relating to any matter in question" was discoverable. The courts took a very wide view of what was covered by this. The test was laid down a long time ago when no-one had the quantities of paper they have now…

…What is now required is that, following only a "reasonable search" (CPR 31.7(1)), the disclosing party should, before making disclosure, consider each document to see whether it adversely affects his own or another party's case or supports another party's case. It is wrong just to disclose a mass of background documents which do not really take the case one way or another. And there is a real vice in doing so: it compels the mass reading by the lawyers on the other side, and is followed usually by the importation of the documents into the whole case thereafter - hence trial bundles most of which are never looked at.