Discovery

This essay on discovery will be a chapter in the Procedural Law and Economics volume forthcoming from Edward Elgar. It reviews the law-and-economics literature on discovery, current as of 2008 (when I wrote the chapter). It first situates discovery in the broader context of incentives to disclose information voluntarily. It then reviews the social benefits of discovery, including benefits for settlement, trial outcomes, filing incentives, and primary activity incentives. The essay follows with a review of the social costs of discovery, including party incentives to conduct excessive and abusive discovery. The chapter ends with a brief review of three discovery reforms: mandatory disclosure, discovery limits, and cost-shifting