Does anyone else think that meet and confers are pointless, ineffective, and a waste of time?

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I’d like to meet and confer in gifs and memes. That might be fun.

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I’ve found that it really just depends on who opposing counsel is.

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Really? Even if you don’t agree on anything, you get them to delineate their position so you know what to say to the court. If a lawyer’s not able to get anything useful out of a M&C that seems like it’s on them (no offense to OP).

And if you’re a decent negotiator you should be able to get some concession most of the time. Or at least some kind of status update depending on context.

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Like 90% of the time. But even the dumb ones are useful ways to get some clarity on whatever motion is coming and get ahead of it, though.

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It can be useful where you’re dealing with a lawyer you know fairly well and is a straight shooter. I often go the entire case without a single discovery motion.

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“I often go the entire case without a single discovery motion” will you… hire me?

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On dispositive motions, sure. But on discovery I find them to be tremendously valuable at narrowing the disputes for the court since judges hate discovery disputes.

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If you have normal practitioners who actually want the discovery, then no. You can narrow and come to agreements. If you are litigating against jerks, then yes of course. Even if you agree, they will move the goalposts.

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They’re great in discovery disputes. I’ve probably done 10 of them in the last few years, all leading to resolutions that allowed us to avoid filing motions to compel.

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One of our federal courts has a local rule that you have to meet and confer before filing a motion to dismiss. As if the other side is going to say, “You’re right. This complaint is baseless. We’ll just go ahead and dismiss it w prejudice.” 🙄

Depends on opposing counsel.

Not necessarily. I usually prepare a list of items I want to discuss with o/c specially on discovery matters.

I switched from a hybrid practice to pure trans work after a particularly lame meet and confer slap fight with some dweeb who was overcompensated for being unpopular in HS

When I started practicing, my jurisdiction allowed (or at least tolerated) an exchange of letters to satisfy the meet-and-confer requirement. That approach usually was a waste of time — one side would send a letter explaining why the discovery requests were objectionable, and the other side would respond with “go pound sand.”

Now that we truly have to meet (either in person or by phone/video) and talk, I agree that it often depends upon opposing counsel. Recently I was served with some discovery requests that seemed way overbroad. I had a meet-and-confer with OC via phone, who was reasonable, explained what he was really interested in, and agreed to narrow his requests. I thought the modified requests were fair, and we immediately produced those docs. Matter resolved, no need to get the judge involved. (Judges hate discovery disputes.)

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