Abstract
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provide the basic framework for production of discovery that is relevant and proportional to litigants’ claims and defenses. In the past, litigants and attorneys far too often used these rules to obstruct the discovery process rather than to facilitate it. This Old Discovery Paradigm used overbroad discovery requests, boilerplate discovery responses, dilatory behavior, and a lack of cooperation among opposing counsel. However, with the emergence of ever-expanding technologies using email, texts, and other forms of electronic communication, the modern legal system requires a New E-Discovery Paradigm to govern how litigants, their counsel, and judges utilize the federal discovery rules when dealing with the vast amount of electronically stored information involved in most civil cases. A New E-Discovery Paradigm must emerge if our modern legal system is to leap into the twenty-first century and effectively and economically deal with ESI. This New E-Discovery Paradigm contains at least ten crucial core components that illuminate and ultimately execute the language and intent of the drafters of the most recent amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
Recommended Citation
William Matthewman,
Towards a New Paradigm for E-Discovery in Civil Litigation: A Judicial Perspective,
71 Fla. L. Rev.
1261
(2019).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/flr/vol71/iss5/4