Brittany Higgins' phone records vital to litigation case brought against her by Linda Reynolds

More than 56,000 pages of Brittany Higgins' mobile phone records downloaded by the Australian Federal Police will form a vital part of the litigation brought against her by Senator Linda Reynolds.

The documents were originally produced for the Bruce Lehrmann defamation proceedings against Network 10 and will be used in the defamation case against Ms Higgins, which is set to go to trial on August 2.

Senator Reynolds' lawyer Martin Bennett told reporters outside court they needed to find pages that were relevant to the case, and would be used in a different perspective to the matter involving Mr Lehrmann and Network 10.

'Our case is slightly different, we need to look at it again,' he said.

'Already we can see there are documents within it that are useful and need to be pulled.'

Lawyers for Ms Higgins and Senator Reynolds were in the WA Supreme Court on Monday for a directions hearing two weeks ahead of the trial.

Senator Reynolds is suing her former staffer over claims social media posts made by Ms Higgins and her husband David Sharaz damaged her reputation.

She claims the posts suggested she had engaged in a political cover-up of Ms Higgins' allegations that she had been raped at Parliament House by her colleague Bruce Lehrmann, a claim he has always denied.

Justice Michael Lee's findings

In the Federal Court earlier this year, Justice Michael Lee ruled he was convinced to a civil standard - which is different to a criminal standard - on the balance of probabilities Ms Higgins was raped.

The finding came following legal action Mr Lehrmann brought against Network 10 and journalist Lisa Wilkinson over a report about the alleged rape on The Project program in 2021. 

Mr Lehrmann is appealing the decision.

Justice Lee also found claims of a political cover-up involving Senator Reynolds and others were not true, a finding Senator Reynolds said vindicated her.

Ms Reynolds told reporters she needed to clear her name, and that Justice Lee was very clear there was never any political conspiracy and that 'many people's lives had been destroyed in the fallout of Ms Higgins' allegations.

'There was simply never any political conspiracy and there was certainly the allegations of mistreatment as the evidence in the Lee trial has absolutely demonstrated,' she said.

Criminal trial

In October 2022, a criminal trial in the ACT Supreme Court against Mr Lehrmann was aborted because of jury misconduct.

Mr Lehrmann had pleaded not guilty to the charge.

A mistrial was declared and the jury was dismissed after it was discovered one of the jurors had conducted their own research outside of what was presented in court.

The trial was relisted for February 2023, but was abandoned and the charge dropped when the Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold found another trial would pose an unacceptable risk to Ms Higgins' mental health.