Legal Discovery Request
Use when asked about discovery requests in litigation — formally requesting documents, information, or testimony from an opposing party — as the formal information-exchange process that follows a legal-litigation-hold.
Discovery is the formal pre-trial process by which parties to a lawsuit exchange evidence and information relevant to the case — a discovery request formally asks the opposing party (or a non-party) to produce documents, answer questions, or provide testimony.
Common types of discovery requests
- Requests for production — asking the other party to produce specific documents or categories of documents.
- Interrogatories — written questions the other party must answer under oath.
- Requests for admission — asking the other party to admit or deny specific factual statements, narrowing what's actually disputed.
- Depositions — oral testimony taken under oath before trial (see Legal Deposition Preparation for preparing a witness for this).
Drafting effective requests
Requests should be specific enough to actually be enforceable and answerable, but broad enough to capture genuinely relevant material — overly broad requests invite objections and delay; overly narrow requests risk missing material that a slightly different phrasing would have captured.
Relationship to litigation holds and e-discovery
Discovery requests presuppose that relevant material has been preserved — see Legal Litigation Hold for the preservation obligation that should already be in place before requests are exchanged. The technical process of searching, reviewing, and producing electronic material in response to a request is Legal E Discovery.
Common pitfalls
- Overly broad, "give me everything" requests — these invite valid objections and slow down the process rather than efficiently surfacing relevant material.
- Overly narrow requests that miss relevant material — a request drafted too specifically around an assumed fact pattern can fail to capture material relevant to facts not yet known.
- Missing response deadlines — discovery deadlines are typically strict and enforced; missing them can result in waived objections or sanctions.
- Inadequate review before producing documents — producing material without proper privilege review risks inadvertently waiving attorney-client privilege or work-product protection.
Learn more
- Legal Litigation Hold for the preservation obligation that precedes discovery.
- Legal E Discovery for the technical process of searching and producing electronic material.
- Legal Deposition Preparation for preparing a witness for deposition testimony.