You need a document, an answer or a step from the other side, and you expect to have to ask the court for it eventually.
A request letter that can be read aloud in court without embarrassment, a preserved refusal, and a two-document record that explains itself.
A NSW civil litigation solicitor.
It does not draft your affidavit or tell you what to swear. An affidavit must be your own account, in your own words, of things you know. This guide is about the correspondence that comes before an application, and how to keep it so it can be exhibited later. See What is an affidavit? for what an affidavit is and what does not belong in one.
Why the pair matters
Courts in NSW expect parties to try to resolve procedural questions between themselves before asking the court to intervene. Many practice notes require it. When you make an application for an order, the court will often ask two questions first: did you ask, and what did they say?
A precise written request and a written refusal answer both questions at once. The court does not have to rely on your description of what happened. It reads the request, reads the reply, and forms its own view. That is the whole method: let the documents do the work.
Write every request as if the judge will be its next reader. Polite, specific, dated, with a clear deadline, and with no argument in it that you would not want read aloud.
Write the request
One request, one letter. If you need three things, you may send one letter with three numbered items, but each item must be separately identifiable so that a reply can address each one.
- Label it OPEN. This is not a settlement communication. Say so in the heading; the label helps make that clear, though whether a communication is protected depends on its substance, not the heading. The labels guide explains the difference.
- Identify the matter in the reference line: court, proceeding number, parties.
- Describe what you want so precisely that a stranger could pick it up off a desk. Not "the relevant emails" but "the written recommendation, the written approval, and the minutes of any meeting at which the decision announced on 20 March 2026 was discussed".
- Say why, briefly and neutrally. One or two sentences on why the document or step is relevant to an issue in the proceedings. No adjectives.
- Say what you will do if it is not provided in plain terms: "If the documents are not provided by that date, I intend to apply to the court for an order that they be produced, and I will rely on this letter and any reply."
- Offer something reasonable where it costs you nothing: a sensible timeframe, an agreed format, a narrower category if the first is too wide.
Notice what the letter does not contain: no account of how Jordan feels about the termination, no accusation that the approval never happened, no reference to anything said in a without-prejudice meeting. Those may be true, and they may matter, but they belong elsewhere. The clear legal letter guide has a full drafting workflow if you want one.
Set the deadline and let it pass
A deadline with a time and a date does two things. It makes the request concrete, and it makes silence into an answer. If nothing arrives by 4:00pm on the day, you can say so accurately.
- Give a reasonable period. Seven to fourteen days is a common negotiating interval for documents, not a legal allowance; the right period depends on what you are asking for and how urgent the timetable is.
- Do not chase early. A follow-up on day three reads as anxious and adds nothing.
- Do not file early without reason. The value of the method is that you gave them the chance. A limitation date, a court direction or a need to preserve evidence is a reason, and where the rules provide a formal route such as a notice to produce, assess that before threatening an application.
- If they ask for more time, consider agreeing, in writing, to a specific new date. Reasonableness is part of the record too.
You do not need to escalate the tone. The passage of a stated deadline, recorded on the page, is the record.