“The Lawyers”, 1855, Honoré Daumier (1808-1879)
Written discovery practice shouldn’t be a joke. But as business trial lawyers, litigators and in-house counsel know, it is a joke too much of the time. Not that many years ago, in Manhattan’s fabled Southern District, a fed-up federal judge had had enough. He threw up his hands during arguments on a motion to compel and referred to answers to interrogatories by one of the two lawyers before him as “slick lawyer answers to lazy lawyer interrogatories”.
A wonderful expression. But we do feel his pain. At this blog, we do love, admire and respect written discovery during the pretrial process in American federal courts. If both efficient and creative–and it should be both–written discovery is a way to shorten (not lengthen or extend) the generally unpredictable, expensive discovery process, and get ready for trial on issues that really belong in the case.