Impending changes to the Federal Rules, evolving judicial expectations, technological advances, and other influences have drastically changed discovery in the last decade. This convergence provides an opportune time to review, revisit, and renew your discovery readiness to reduce costs and risk.

New Federal Rules

A number of impending changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure impact discovery. The most important will be the changes to the scope of discovery under Rule 26 and ground-shifting changes to Rule 37(e)'s standard for spoliation.

Rule 26 currently permits discovery “reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence” with the provision for subject matter discovery as allowed by the court. The new rule moved existing proportionality factors (with some changes) into Rule 26(b). It will limit discovery to documents and ESI “relevant to any party's claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case.” Burdensome discovery will only be allowed when the requestor shows that it is proportional to the needs and amount in controversy.