---
name: legal-discovery-request
description: 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.
---

# Legal Discovery Request

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
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.
- E-discovery, the technical process of searching and producing electronic material.
- [[legal-deposition-preparation]] for preparing a witness for deposition testimony.