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In re: Everyone Who Thought Litigation Would Be Glamorous
Welcome to discovery, the phase of litigation where everyone's drowning in PDFs and pretending it's strategy.
Both sides exchange millions of documents, half irrelevant, a quarter duplicates, and the rest in formats that crash your review platform. "Proportional to the needs of the case" is a joke, and someone's Slack message about "crushing it" is already Exhibit A.
Fun Facts:
Month 1 – The Service:
Opposing counsel serves 47 document requests, each with 12 sub-parts. Request 23 asks for "all documents related to, concerning, or in any way connected to the subject matter of this litigation." Translation: everything you've ever touched.
Month 2 – The Objection:
You object for overbreadth, burden, and violations of the Geneva Convention.
Month 3 – The Meet and Confer:
"Can we narrow Request 23?"
"No. But produce everything anyway."
"...That's not how objections work."
Month 4 – The Production:
You produce 180,000 documents.
Month 5 – The Follow-Up:
Opposing counsel: "You missed the email from Feb 14, 2019 at 3:47 PM."
Narrator: It never existed.
Setup:
Four million emails. Partner wants results by Monday. It's Friday at 4 PM.
Keywords:
"Contract," "Deal," "Money."
Hits: 3.8 million.
Partner: "Seems high. Can you review those manually?"
You propose Boolean searches so complex NASA could use them for Mars landings. Still 400,000 results. Partner: "Just look for the smoking gun."
Haunting Searches:
Partner's final wisdom: "Mark everything bad as privileged." Perfect.
Day 1:
Interface designed in 2003. Coding options: Relevant, Not Relevant, Hot, Privileged, or "I Don't Know What This Is But It Scares Me."
Document Review Bingo:
4,000 entries. Each one must be detailed enough to show privilege, vague enough to keep it. Impossible. Partner calls it "a good training exercise."
Sample Entry:
"Email from CEO to legal: 'Are we screwed?'"
Description: "Communication seeking legal advice."
Answer email: "Yes."
Opposing counsel challenges every entry. Everyone loses.
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The Friday Afternoon Drop:
Opposing counsel produces 80,000 TIFFs at 5:47 PM before a holiday weekend. Subject: "Rolling Production 1 of 15."
The Format Nightmare:
All images, no text, no metadata. OCR detects the word "the" 4,700 times.
The Counter-Move:
You invoke "metadata compliance" like a spell. The judge rolls her eyes.
The Strategic Redaction:
Everything's blacked out. Opposing counsel claims it's "personal." It's their CEO's earnings email. Sure.
"Can we discuss outstanding discovery issues?" Translation: a three-hour argument producing nothing but invoices.
You debate for 90 minutes whether "custodian" means "person" or "concept."
Result: stalemate. Everyone bills $1,200/hour to achieve zero progress.
Judge: "How many documents are we talking about?"
You: "100,000."
Judge: "How many do you actually need?"
You: "...200?"
Judge: "Defendant will produce 200."
Everyone claims victory. Judge awards costs to the other side anyway.
Partner: "So we won?"
You: "We paid $8,000 in fees."
Partner: "So we lost?"
You: "Discovery is a circle. Nobody wins."
The Hoarder: 14 hard drives. Saved every email since 1997.
The Minimalist: Deletes inbox weekly. Calls it "organization."
The Texter: Discussed everything by phone, which was "accidentally" thrown away yesterday.
Spoliation imminent. You practice deep breathing.
Client: "Can I delete the email where I joked about cooking the books?"
You: "NO."
Client: "Too late, I forwarded it to opposing counsel."
You: [actual screaming]
AI review software promises 99.7% accuracy.
Reality: It flags lunch menus as "Hot" because of the word "deal."
The actual smoking gun? Misspelled as "confidnetal."
Old way: 15 contract attorneys.
New way: 15 contract attorneys plus a $200K software bill.
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Topic list includes everything from "keyword selection methodology" to "data retention since 1987."
You prep for 40 hours. Witness lasts 12 minutes before crying.
Q: "Why didn't you search for 'understanding'?"
A: "Because... we didn't understand."
For Associates:
For Partners:
For Everyone:
Nobody's winning. Both sides are equally miserable. That's balance.
Discovery is legal trench warfare.
Everyone's miserable. Everyone's billing.
Every so often you find the smoking gun—and realize it's yours.
Discovery Mantras:
Poll: What's worse?
Share this with:
Walter, Editor-in-Law
Still not disbarred. Licensed to practice sarcasm in all 50 states. Currently buried under 400,000 PDFs.
P.S. - To the associate who emailed asking if we're hiring: We're not a real law firm. We're a satirical newsletter. But honestly, your resume was solid and we appreciate that you're as dead inside as we are.
P.P.S. - If you're currently in hour 73 of document review: Blink twice if you need extraction. We can't help, but we acknowledge your suffering.
Legal LOLz is a satirical publication. Nothing here is legal advice. Don't cite this in your privilege log. Your opponents are reading this too.
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