STANDARDIZING INFORMATION.  Cases in the CCLD allow the parties to follow the default standard Expert Discovery Protocol (right) or to choose to be governed by a customized protocol that they negotiate.  That Protocol seeks to standardize what information will be produced in the course of expert discovery and when it will be produced.  The Protocol promotes cooperation among counsel early on in the case in identifying experts, scheduling testifying expert depositions and producing documents relied upon by such experts.  For example, parties are to provide good faith estimates of how long an expert deposition will take and attempt to schedule the depositions at convenient locations.  

 

RULE 26 OF THE FEDERAL RULES OF CIVIL PROCEDURE.   The Protocol has adopted the recent amendments to Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, requiring full discovery of the experts' opinions and of the documents, facts and data used to support them, but limit discovery of attorney-expert communications and draft reports.  The Protocol requires that parties produce, at least 14 days in advance of an expert deposition, documents relied upon by the expert, but not otherwise produced in the litigation.  However, the Protocol explicitly provides that no communications between counsel and their expert shall be produced and no party shall be required to produce any work product between counsel and their expert.

 

As with fact discovery, these guidelines provide for a greater degree of certainty, efficiency and predictability as to how discovery will proceed.