The top 5 mistakes legal teams often make with Public Inquiries cases

27th August 2026  |  6 min read

Author: Will Lunt, Commercial Director at CYFOR Legal

Our Commercial Director Will Lunt talks about how Public Inquiries often place legal teams under intense pressure. The issues are sensitive, the data volumes can be overwhelming and decisions made early in the process can affect cost. 

For lawyers, disclosure requires careful control over where data sits, how it’s collected, how it’s searched, and how decisions are recorded. When that process is rushed or poorly scoped, mistakes can quickly become expensive, difficult to explain, and damaging to the credibility of the wider response.

One of the most common mistakes I see is legal teams moving too quickly to collect data before their team has properly mapped the relevant sources.

In public inquiries, potentially relevant material may sit across email accounts, shared drives, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, mobile devices, cloud platforms, archived systems, scanned documents and legacy archives. Some sources may be controlled centrally whilst others may sit with individuals, departments, external advisers or third-party providers.

If the data landscape is not understood at the outset, legal teams risk collecting too much, missing important sources, duplicating work, or creating avoidable costs.

I often mention to clients that “A broad collection of data may feel safer at first, but it can create a larger review population, more technical issues, and more pressure later in the process.”

A better approach is to always scope early. Identify likely custodians, systems, date ranges, data types, access issues and preservation risks before collection begins. We help legal teams understand the data position early, including custodians, data sources, collection options, likely volumes and cost drivers, so that the workflow is practical, defensible and proportionate.

You’ll likely be aware that disclosure is no longer limited to email and formal documents. Increasingly, key evidence may appear in Teams chats, WhatsApp messages, mobile data, collaboration platforms, cloud folders, meeting recordings, shared links and embedded content.

These sources don’t always behave like traditional documents and messages, they need context to make sense. Attachments could also sit separately from the communication, threads may be fragmented and exports may be incomplete or difficult to search. Informal communications may also contain sensitive personal data, privileged material or irrelevant content that still needs to be handled carefully.

The mistake I see quite often is assuming these sources can be collected, processed and reviewed in the same way as a standard document set. They often need specific planning, particularly where continuity, context and evidential integrity matter.

Legal teams should consider how each data type will be preserved, collected, processed, searched and presented before committing to a workflow. This is especially important where material will be challenged or where the inquiry needs a clear explanation of how evidence was handled.

Search terms, analytics and filtering decisions can shape the entire disclosure exercise, it’s more common than you think. If they are developed late, or treated as a purely technical task, they can produce a review population that is either too narrow to be reliable or too broad to be manageable.

In public inquiries, search strategy needs input from those who understand the issues, the terminology, the relevant individuals, the chronology and the likely evidential gaps.

Initial searches can be tested, refined and sense-checked against known facts, sample results and emerging issues. Analytics, deduplication, email threading and early case assessment can help reduce noise and identify priority material, but they need to be applied with judgement.

This is where we come in, we support legal teams by helping them get to the right documents, issues and decisions faster, by using structured workflows, search support, analytics and Disclosure Strategy Sessions where appropriate.

In an inquiry context, the process may matter almost as much as the output. Legal teams need to explain what was collected, what was excluded, which searches were run, how review populations were created, how privilege was handled, and why certain decisions were made.

A common mistake legal teams often make is making sensible decisions at the time but failing to record them properly. It will be difficult to justify the approach later, particularly if there is a challenge, a change in scope, or a request for further information. 

A defensible disclosure process should include clear records of collection methodology, processing assumptions, search and filtering approach, exceptions, quality checks, access controls and production decisions. 

My top tip is to always keep a clear record of the decisions made along the way, so your team can explain how the data was collected, narrowed down, reviewed and prepared for production if asked later.

Our approach is similar and places emphasis on controlled access, chain of custody, processing records, audit trails, exception reporting, quality checks and production records, helping legal teams understand how material was handled and how final review or production sets were created.

Public inquiries can involve large volumes of material, long time periods and multiple stakeholders, without early control, the review burden can expand quickly.

Cost problems often arise when assumptions are unclear. For example, your team may not know how many custodians are involved, how much data exists, what needs processing, how long hosting may be required, how many reviewers will need access, or whether productions will be required in phases.

Proportionality should be considered from the start, not just when costs become difficult. Early scoping, targeted collection, sensible filtering, deduplication, analytics and staged review workflows can all help legal teams focus on what is likely to matter most.

Inquiries require confidence in the evidence, but that confidence depends on structure and control, not just reviewing everything. We offer no-obligation disclosure strategy sessions with legal teams to help you understand costs, what data may be involved, what information is still missing, what steps may be needed and how best to approach disclosure before significant review work begins.

Disclosure in public inquiries is demanding because the stakes are high and the data is rarely straightforward. 

The legal team does not need every answer on day one but it does need a clear plan for understanding the data, preserving what matters, reducing noise, and building a process that can be explained later.

For support with eDiscovery, disclosure, or digital evidence workflows in public inquiries, contact us.