Discovery 101

I am familiar with lawsuits, but what is "discovery"?

Many people generally understand that litigation usually arises from an individual's grievance with another person. These grievances may also arise between business entities. The substance of these types of grievances can range from personal injury, defamation, trademark infringement, property disputes and everything in between. The way that the legal profession is portrayed in entertainment media, gives the impression that all lawsuits are decided in the courtroom. But, what happens in the time between the filing of a lawsuit and a trial?

The vast majority of that time is spent by both sides of the dispute engaging in the discovery process. This post-filing but pretrial time period is commonly referred to as the discovery phase. Discovery is the formal process where the parties to a lawsuit both seek and provide relevant information. Each side is required to exchange broad categories of information that might