Document production is the formal process of exchanging relevant documents and electronically stored information between parties in litigation, typically in response to discovery requests under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Productions must follow specific formatting and organizational requirements to be accepted by the receiving party and the court.
What is document production?
Document production is a core component of the discovery phase in civil litigation. Under FRCP Rule 34, any party may serve on any other party a request to produce designated documents, electronically stored information, or tangible things. The responding party must produce the requested materials or state objections within 30 days of being served.
FRCP Rule 34(b)(2)(E) specifies that a party must produce documents as they're kept in the usual course of business, or must organize and label them to match the categories in the request. This requirement prevents parties from deliberately disorganizing productions to obscure relevant materials. For ESI, FRCP Rule 34(b)(2)(D) allows the requesting party to specify the production form. If no form is specified, the producing party must provide ESI in the form it's ordinarily maintained or in a reasonably usable form.
FRCP Rule 26(b)(2)(B) addresses proportionality limits on production scope. It recognizes that ESI from certain sources may not be reasonably accessible because of undue burden or cost. The producing party bears the burden of proving inaccessibility, but the court may still order production if the requesting party shows good cause.
"A party must produce documents as they are kept in the usual course of business or must organize and label them to correspond to the categories in the request."-- FRCP Rule 34(b)(2)(E)(i)
Production challenges and standards
Document production involves a range of technical and legal challenges:
- According to a 2019 Lex Machina study, document production disputes are among the most frequently litigated discovery issues in federal courts.
- The Sedona Conference estimates that production formatting errors account for a significant portion of discovery disputes, often requiring re-production and additional court involvement.
- Common production formats include native files, single-page or multi-page TIFF images with extracted text, and PDF with searchable text overlays.
- Each production set typically requires a load file containing metadata fields, Bates number ranges, and document relationship information.
Document production in Hintyr
Hintyr supports full production workflows from document selection through export. The productions section covers the complete export process, including how to organize production sets using tags (also called folders).
Key production features include the export wizard for guided production setup, Bates numbering during export for sequential document identification, and configurable export options for format conversion, metadata field selection, and privilege exclusion.