No one enjoys paper discovery. Any practitioner who tells you otherwise is either insane or lying. It’s time-consuming and expensive to gather and review information to produce, and it’s painful to squabble with opposing counsel over information withheld.
In an attempt to address and alleviate some of these concerns, the Federal Judicial Center has published its Pilot Initial Discovery Protocols for Employment Cases Alleging Adverse Action [pdf]. These protocols set forth the documents and categories of information that the plaintiff and defendant must turn over during the initial disclosure process, voluntarily and without a formal request, and no later than 30 days after the employer files its answer or responsive pleading. Molly DiBianca’s Delaware Employment Law Blog provides an excellent summary.
These disclosures are comprehensive, and cover many of the documents that will be exchanged in most garden-variety discrimination lawsuits. Of all of these disclosures, I want to point out one curiosity. Employers are not required to disclose the entire employee handbook, but only its table of contents and index. The only policies that employers are required to initially turn over are those “relevant to the adverse action in effect at the time of the adverse action,” such as discipline or EEO policies.
In light of these protocols, maybe we need to reconsider the rote production of entire employee handbooks in discrimination cases. Maybe we also need to reconsider the inclusion of tables of contents and indices in handbooks, to limit their discoverability at the outset litigation in federal court.