Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series.

In March, the Sedona Conference published, “Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34(b)(2) Primer: Practice Pointers for Responding to Discovery Requests,” 19 SEDONA CONF. J. 447. The publication was the conference’s final version of its Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34(b)(2) primer, a project of The Working Group on Electronic Document Retention and Production (WG1). The public comment version of the primer had been published in September 2017 and stemmed from the December 2015 changes to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34(b)(2) (Rule 34), which, per the primer, “were intended to address systemic problems in how discovery requests and responses traditionally were handled, and the observation that, over a year later, despite numerous articles, training programs, and conferences about the changes, their implementation had been mixed, at best.” In this week’s article, I will look at some of the primer’s takes on discovery requests and responses to see the primer’s strengths and weaknesses.

Background