Guerrilla Discovery

Battle-Tested Discovery Tactics and Weapons

Most litigation and settlement outcomes are determined in quarrelsome discovery fights. Coercion and confrontation are usually necessary to obtain evidence on the hotly-contested issues.

To help you win more of these important discovery skirmishes, Ashley Lipson’s Guerrilla Discovery offers dozens of clever strategies, novel arguments, direct answers, cautionary instructions, helpful timelines, tactically-annotated rules, and over one hundred innovative forms that will help you:

• Capture evidence establishing your claims and defenses
• Secure admissions
• Settle issues and disputes
• Impeach the enemy and its witnesses
• Uncover what the enemy is hiding
• Learn what the enemy has on you

How to handle defiant deponents and uncooperative attorneys with innovative discovery tactics and weapons. Just a few tips from the book include:

Initial Steps

• Getting the truth out of your own client can be difficult. I have found a trick that always works. After your client has told you his side of the story, look him in the eye and say, ‘I believe everything you told me. But in order to be ready for the enemy, I need you to tell me something else. When that #!$?&! comes into court, what…?’ The truth is sure to follow this question.”
• “Is It Discoverable?” annotated checklist. Here are fast, direct, and detailed answers to the most common discovery questions. Includes “Six Degrees of Discoverability” quick-reference chart.

Requests for Admissions

• “Countless times practitioners waltz into court, dumb and happy because they have under their arms papers labeled ‘business records,’ as if those papers were self-authenticating and self-admitting. They are not! This blissful ignorance, however, is counterbalanced by attorneys on the other side who, upon hearing the magic words ‘business records,’ lay down and assume that there are no defenses to admissibility. Both positions are incorrect.”
• 23 requests for admission that are specifically designed to solve document admissibility problems ignored by discovery rules and universally omitted by forms books and treatises.

Interrogatories

• “A well-drafted set of interrogatories should never receive fast answers. On the contrary, you know you have done your job when the enemy is forced to duck, weave, squirm and refuse. Take the greatest pride in questions that simply cannot be answered by the enemy.” Dozens of artfully-crafted, precisely-focused, and complete sets of interrogatories are provided. They establish elements, identify and locate evidence, attack pleadings, and assail experts.
• How to mix boilerplate and specific facts to create effective objections, with checklist of objections.

Depositions

• Tricks for catching liars, showing bias, not accepting evasive answers (including “I don’t remember”), establishing a range for quantitative information, and generally handling difficult deponents.
• How to counter verbal and nonverbal coaching, coaching off the record, and obnoxious objections.

Shields

• Here is the dream responsive pleading … a Motion for Protective Order that contains every possible challenge to every type of discovery request.
• Before responding, review these 12 grounds for objecting to discovery requests. Then check the lists of objections specific to each discovery device.
• 16 objections to physical examinations.

You receive complete and targeted sets of strategically-annotated discovery documents, complete with responses and shields for each weapon: requests for admissions, interrogatories, deposition checklists, notices for production, and notices for inspection.

This book and Digital Access are designed to help you efficiently and with less aggravation get more from your discovery efforts:

• Firmly establish your allegations
• Learn of additional counts or causes of action
• Discover and weaken the enemy’s defenses
• Quickly eliminate fictitious and boilerplate defenses
• Obtain concessions and admissions
• Coerce settlement

Use Ashley Lipson’s Guerrilla Discovery to strike and parry quickly and painfully during your next discovery confrontation.

REVISION 17 HIGHLIGHTS

Guerrilla Discovery is the most complete and most comprehensive book on the subject of Discovery ever written. It more than covers the basic weapons of discovery (Requests for Admissions, Interrogatories, Notices for Production, Inspection, and Physical Examination, Depositions and Subpoenas), and it directs and guides all manner of submission and enforcement.

Guerrilla Discovery and no other single source has:

•  Coverage for all federal and state courts
•  Tactics, rules, decisions, statutes, tips, samples, checklists, and protocols
•  Tons of explosive forms for discovery demands, objections and opposition
•  Over 2,000 annotations with cites of key cases, authorities and comments
•  An arsenal of strategies, counter-strategies and anti-counter strategies
•  A unique annotated list of EVERY defense/objection known to mankind
•  Electronically Stored Information (ESI) resources, sources and guides
•  All approved official judicial counsel form interrogatories
•  Coverage of predictive coding and technology assisted review (TAR)
•  Sample letters to smoke out every type of enemy obstructionism
•  Valuable training for evidence and objections in general
•  A step-by-step roadmap for noticing, taking and defending depositions
•  Guides for avoiding and handling dirty discovery tricks
•  Key Rules uniquely and thoroughly Annotated
•  Special Glossary for electronic and digital discovery
•  Tons of sample interrogatories, RFA’s, notices and demands
•  An armada of case law supporting every key issue
•  Official eDiscovery court approved protocols and conventions
•  What to say, and what not to say at depositions and motions
•  Basically, everything you need for Discovery in a single book

NEW OR REVISED SECTIONS

NEW OR REVISED SECTIONS

Chapter 1. Fundamental Overview

• §1.61 Universal Orders

Chapter 2. Is it Discoverable?

• §2.11 The Court’s Discretion
• §2.12 Does Discoverability Equate to Admissibility?
• §2.20 Is It Discoverable?

Chapter 3. Electronic, Digital and Other Media

• §3.30 Social Media And Networking
• §3.31 Your Client’s Social Media
• §3.32 The Opposition’s Social Media
• §3.33 Researching The Internet Service Provider
• §3.34 Social Media From Third Parties

Chapter 4. Weapon Selection, Attack and Enforcement

• §4.20 Attack
• §4.22 Federal Rule 26
• §4.30 Timing and Sequencing
• §4.32 Expedited Discovery
• §4.33 Traditional Pre-Trial Discovery

Chapter 6. Interrogatories

• §6.36 Non-Evidentiary Disclosures

Chapter 7. Notices for Production

• §7.20 Tips For Timing Your Attack
  §7.30 Identifying Your Quarry
  §7.60 Responding To The Requests
  §7.64 Document Destruction

Chapter 8. Requests for Inspection

• §8.60 Responding to the Requests
• §8.63 Spoliation

Chapter 10. Depositions

• §10.41 Federal Rules Pertaining to Depositions
• §10.61 Preparing And Defending Your Client

Chapter 11. Subpoena Power

• §11.20 Timing The Attack
• §11.41 Rule 45 of The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
• §11.60 Compliance and Response

Chapter 12. Defending and Responding in General

• §12.42 Objection
• §12.43 Motion For A Protective Order

Chapter 13. Defending Discovery’s Limits

• §13.10 Threshold Defense Strategy
• §13.20 The Scope of Discovery

Chapter 14. Using the Work Product Doctrine

• §14.11 Definition and Description
• §14.21 Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)
• §14.31 Raw Facts, Legal Claims, and Real Evidence
• §14.35 Opinion Work Product

Chapter 15. Using Traditional Privileges

• §15.10 Confidential Relationships In General
• §15.11 Professional Privileges
• §15.13 Domestic Privileges

Chapter 16. Exposing Burdensome and Abusive Tactics

• §16.30 Abuse By Discoveree

Chapter 18. Reopening Discovery

• §18.20 Background

AND MORE!

ABBREVIATED TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1. Fundamental Overview
CHAPTER 2. Is It Discoverable?
CHAPTER 3. Electronic, Digital and Other Media
CHAPTER 4. Weapon Selection and Attack
CHAPTER 5. Requests for Admissions
CHAPTER 6. Interrogatories
CHAPTER 7. Notices for Production
CHAPTER 8. Requests for Inspection
CHAPTER 9. Physical and Mental Examinations
CHAPTER 10. Depositions
CHAPTER 11. Subpoena Power
CHAPTER 12. Defending and Responding in General
CHAPTER 13. Defending Discovery’s Limits
CHAPTER 14. Using The Work Product Doctrine
CHAPTER 15. Using Traditional Privileges
CHAPTER 16. Exposing Burdensome and Abusive Tactics
CHAPTER 17. Enforcement
INDEX

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ashley S. Lipson has been a practicing attorney and litigator for over 30 years. He is currently a lecturer, software designer and law professor. He has taught at The Detroit College of Law, Michigan State University, Pepperdine Law School and currently at The University of La Verne, School of Law.

He is probably best known as the creator and writer of the Objection! game series (the first computer games to be certified for mandatory continuing legal education) and as author of the books Documentary Evidence (Matthew Bender), Demonstrative Evidence (Matthew Bender), Law Office Automation (Prentice-Hall), and Is It Admissible? (James). He has developed the Lawyers’ Comprehensive Computer Document System and published 60 articles.

In addition to two undergraduate degrees in Computer Science (As.D.’s), Mr. Lipson initially received his B.A. in Telecommunications from Michigan State University. He then received his J.D. degree from St. John’s University Law School in 1970. Thereafter, Mr. Lipson earned an M.A. in Mathematics from Wayne State University and an LL.M. from that University’s law school.