Civil Discovery: Lawyers'Views of Its Effectiveness, Its Principal Problems and Abuses |
| |
| Authors: | Wayne D. Brazil |
| |
| Affiliation: | Wayne D. Brazil is Associate Professor of Law, Hastings College of the Law, University of California, San Francisco;Affiliated Scholar, American Bar Foundation. B.A., 1966, Stanford University;M.A., 1967, Ph.D., 1975, Harvard University;J.D., 1975, University of California, Berkeley. |
| |
| Abstract: | This article, the second in a three-part series based on interviews of 180 civil litigators in Chicago, describes lawyers'assessments of the health of the discovery system and their views about the relative severity of several major problems and abuses that burden the discovery process. The data present a disturbing picture of the way the discovery system functions, especially in larger cases. Big case litigators are much unhappier with the current state of affairs in discovery than are their smaller case counterparts, and apparently for good reason. Tactical jockeying, evasive and dilatory practices, and various forms of harassment play major and costly roles in a high percentage of large lawsuits. And in at least one of every two big cases the discovery system fails to distribute the relevant information to all the parties. Perhaps the most dramatic evidence of disaffection with the current state of affairs in major litigation, however, is the widespread support the lawyers expressed for more aggressive judicial involvement in the process and for more frequent, telling use of sanctions to punish its abusers.
The third article in this series will report the lawyers'reform proposals and will explore some of the implications of the data described here. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
|
|
