The Sedona Conference Publishes Its Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34(b)(2) Primer: Practice Pointers for Responding to Discovery Requests

Heed the warnings of federal judges, and throw out your old boilerplate responses to discovery requests. The Sedona Conference and its Working Group on Electronic Document Retention & Production (WG1) have just published The Sedona Conference Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34(b)(2) Primer: Practice Pointers for Responding to Discovery Requests, available free for download at bit.ly/2yM9eag.

The December 2015 amendments to Rule 34 were intended to address systemic problems in how discovery requests and responses traditionally were handled, and yet, despite numerous articles, training programs, and conferences about the changes, implementation of the changes has been mixed, at best. Amended Rule 34 encourages an evolving and iterative conversation between requesting and responding parties about what is being sought and what will be produced - the Primer seeks to normalize that concept and provide a framework for how those conversations may proceed.

The Primer, which is the result of several months of review and analysis by a diverse team of Working Group 1 members, is not intended to be the last word on how to implement the amendments, as there is no "correct" way to do so, and new ideas and best practices are emerging every day. Rather, the Primer gathers advice and observations from: (i) requesting and responding parties who have successfully implemented them and (ii) legal decisions interpreting the amended Rules, and offers practice pointers on how to comply with the amended Rule.

The public comment version of the Primer was published in September 2017. The editors carefully considered the comments received during the public comment period and, where appropriate, incorporated them into this final version.