A REPORT FROM THE PROPORTIONALITY ROADSHOW

Professor Steven Gensler and Judge Lee Rosenthal moderated, drawing on their background with the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and their work as reporters for the Duke Center's Guidelines and Practices for Implementing the 2015 Discovery Amendments to Achieve Proportionality.2 While the Roadshow did not focus on the Guidelines and Practices, the lawyes and judges who attended the sessions provided specific suggestions for refining the work to make it more helpful. [...]a pre-Rule 26 Order lets the judge state his or her specific expectations. A recent Federal Judicial Center study found that discovery motions in cases using these protocols had been cut in half.4 These early results provide useful empirical support for the common-sense idea that starting discovery with a quick, battlefree exchange of the information experienced lawyers know they need to get or provide can go a long way toward making the rest of the discovery process smoother, simpler, better informed, and less contentious. To paraphrase one judge who spake at the Roadshow, "would you rather take a little time early to check to see if your cases are on the right track, and perhaps a little more time to put them on the right track, or would you rather spend a lot of time dealing with them after they derail into the motions morass that requires endless clerk-and-judge hours to sort through and resolve?" LEE H. ROSENTHAL is a U.S. District Court Judge for Southern District of Texas.