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Discovery

PLA 2201Activity 6

Why it Matters

A lawsuit pits two sides against each other, and then its rules make each side hand the other evidence. Served with a proper request, a party must answer questions under oath, turn over its emails and texts, and admit what it cannot truthfully deny, even when the truth hurts. What comes back is the record both sides negotiate from and try the case on, and a party that stonewalls risks sanctions as severe as a default judgment. Florida moved its discovery rules toward the federal model on January 1, 2025, yet the two rulebooks still differ on points a paralegal has to get right, like how many interrogatories one party may serve. The work here is drafting from the rule itself and checking every summary of it, a model’s included, against the official text.

Current Context

On January 15, 2026, the Florida Supreme Court amended Florida Rules of Civil Procedure 1.350 and 1.370 (opens in a new tab) in case SC2024-0779, effective April 1, 2026. Requests for production and requests for admission, and the responses to each, must now be served on all parties, as Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5 (opens in a new tab) already required in federal court. The Florida Bar’s Civil Procedure Rules Committee had proposed more, requiring those requests and responses to be filed with the court too, and the Court adopted its amendments with modifications that left filing out. Chapter 1 on The Florida Bar’s rules page (opens in a new tab), in its April 1, 2026 edition, opens Rule 1.350(b)(4) with “Requests must be served on all parties,” where the opinion’s appendix says “Responses.” A model working from 2024 commentary can describe a filing requirement Florida never adopted, and a compiled rulebook can misprint the rule it did, so a check of either amendment ends at the opinion.

Key Concepts

Discovery

The pretrial phase in which each party can require the other parties, and sometimes nonparties, to produce information relevant to the case. It runs on a set of formal tools, each with its own rule, and it builds much of the factual record before any trial or settlement. Federal cases follow the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and Florida state cases follow the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure, which moved closer to the federal approach on January 1, 2025.

Scope of Discovery and Proportionality

Under Federal Rule 26(b)(1) and, since January 1, 2025, Florida Rule 1.280(c)(1), a party may discover any nonprivileged matter relevant to a claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case. Proportionality weighs factors like the amount in controversy, the parties’ access to the information, and whether the burden of the discovery outweighs its likely benefit. Florida’s old rule reached anything relevant to the subject matter of the action, so the new text narrows what counts as fair game, and its commentary tells courts to apply the federal proportionality standard.

Initial Disclosures

Information each side must hand over without waiting for a request: the witnesses and documents it may use to support its case, its damages computation, and any insurance that may cover a judgment. They are due within 14 days after the parties’ Rule 26(f) conference under Federal Rule 26(a)(1), and within 60 days after service of the complaint under Florida Rule 1.280(a). Florida, which added the requirement on January 1, 2025, also bars a party from seeking other discovery until it has served its own disclosures, and both systems impose a duty to supplement.

Interrogatories

Written questions one party serves on another, answered in writing and under oath, used to pin down the other side’s account and to identify witnesses and documents. Only a party can be required to answer them, and without leave of court the count is capped: 25 including discrete subparts under Federal Rule 33, and 30 including all subparts under Florida Rule 1.340. Florida adds forms the federal rules lack: in general personal injury negligence, automobile negligence, and medical malpractice cases, initial interrogatories on a subject a court-approved form covers must come from that form.

Requests for Production and Electronically Stored Information

Written demands that a party produce documents, electronically stored information (ESI), or tangible things for inspection and copying. ESI includes email, text messages, files, and social media content, and a request may specify the form in which it is to be produced. Federal Rule 34 and Florida Rule 1.350 govern these requests and the responses, including the requirement that an objection state whether any responsive material is being withheld on the basis of that objection.

Requests for Admission

Written requests that another party admit the truth of specific facts, the application of law to fact, or the genuineness of documents. A matter admitted is conclusively established for the pending action unless the court lets the party withdraw or amend the admission, so admissions take issues off the table before trial. Federal Rule 36 and Florida Rule 1.370 set the procedure, including the rule that a matter is admitted if the party does not respond in time.

Depositions and Subpoenas

A deposition is sworn, out-of-court testimony taken in response to questions, recorded by a court reporter and usable later in the case. A subpoena is the court’s command that a nonparty appear to testify, produce documents, or both, and it is the tool that reaches witnesses who are not parties to the suit. Federal Rules 30 and 45 and Florida Rules 1.310 and 1.410 govern them, and each system sets its own terms for notice, objections, and how far a nonparty can be made to travel.

Motion to Compel and Sanctions

When a party ignores a proper discovery request or answers evasively, the requesting party can ask the court for an order compelling a response, under Federal Rule 37(a) or Florida Rule 1.380(a). Both systems expect the movant to confer first and certify that it tried: the federal certificate is in Rule 37(a)(1), and Florida’s, since January 1, 2025, is in its general conferral rule, Rule 1.202. Sanctions under Federal Rule 37 and Florida Rule 1.380 run from an award of fees to barring evidence or striking pleadings, and Florida’s 2025 amendments extended them to a failure to disclose or supplement.

Resources

What to Do

Keep two rulebooks open side by side: the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure. You map the discovery tools in each, draft one discovery paper under both, and turn a stonewalled request into a motion to compel. The AI you work with drafts and explains, and each rule number, deadline, and requirement it gives you is unconfirmed until you find it in the official text. By the end you can say which rulebook governs a discovery question and point to the text that settles it.

Part 1: Map the Current Rules

Start by getting the shape of the whole discovery toolkit in front of you. Run the Rule Comparison Mapper prompt, then read the rules it points to. For the federal side, read Rule 26 and the discovery rules that follow it on the Cornell Legal Information Institute site. For Florida, read Chapter 1 of the Florida Rules of Court Procedure on The Florida Bar’s site. Pay special attention to the scope of discovery. Both systems now let a party discover any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to a claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case. Florida adopted that proportionality language, along with mandatory initial disclosures, only in amendments that took effect January 1, 2025. Read the Florida Courts summary of those 2025 changes so you can describe what changed and when. As you go, note at least two places where the federal and Florida rules still differ, so you have something concrete to say about the contrast.

Part 2: Draft and Verify a Discovery Instrument

Now draft something real. Using the Instrument Drafter prompt, draft one discovery instrument for a simple fact pattern: a set of interrogatories, a request for production, or a notice of deposition. Draft it twice, once under the Federal Rules and once under the Florida Rules. Ask the model to cite the governing rule inside the document and to hand you the checklist of rule requirements it built the draft around. If you pick interrogatories, use a common case type like automobile negligence, because Florida sets a trap a model can walk into. Rule 1.340 requires a party’s initial interrogatories on a subject covered by a Florida Supreme Court form to come from that form. Open Appendix I of the Florida rules and check whether the model used the approved form or quietly wrote its own. Then take the other seat and check the work. Run the Citation and Rule Verifier prompt, and confirm each cited rule number, deadline, and formatting requirement against the primary text on Cornell and The Florida Bar’s site. Keep a short running list of anything the model got wrong, invented, or stated with more confidence than the rule supports. A citation to the wrong rule, a deadline that does not exist, a Florida interrogatory set that ignores the required standard form, or a federal requirement quietly applied to a Florida document all count. Catching them is the point.

Part 3: Turn a Dispute into a Motion to Compel, and See How It Is Filed

Discovery only works if a party can enforce it, so take the next step. Run the Dispute-to-Sanctions Walkthrough prompt for the system you chose. Have the model draft a motion to compel for a party that has ignored proper requests, including the good-faith effort to confer and the certification that it happened. Verify the enforcement rule it cites, Federal Rule 37 or Florida Rule 1.380, against the primary text, and note how Florida’s 2025 amendments broadened the court’s sanctions authority. Check the certification too. Federal Rule 37(a)(1) still carries it. Florida moved its version into a general conferral rule, Rule 1.202, effective January 1, 2025, so a model that cites Rule 1.380 for it is working from an older rulebook. Then look at how the motion would reach the court. In Florida, that path runs through the statewide E-Filing Portal at myflcourtaccess.com; in federal court, it runs through CM/ECF, the filing system behind PACER. Trace what a filer does in each: how a document is uploaded and how the other parties are served electronically. You do not need an account to see this. The Portal’s Training Materials and Manuals page posts its E-Filer User Manual and E-Service User Guide, and the PACER site explains how CM/ECF filing works. Neither portal sets the deadlines, though. Those come from the rules and from the court’s own orders, such as a Florida case management order or a federal scheduling order.

Part 4: Write Your Forum Post

Write a post of roughly 500 to 700 words with two clearly labeled sections. In the first, report your verification results. Say which of the AI’s rule citations, deadlines, and requirements held up against the official text, and what it got wrong or invented. Include at least one concrete difference you found between the federal and Florida rules, including something the 2025 Florida amendments changed. In the second, reflect on using AI for discovery drafting: where it saved you real work and where it was unreliable. Then describe how you would use it responsibly in a setting where a wrong deadline or a bad citation has consequences. Quote at least one specific rule requirement you verified, and cite where you confirmed it.

Include one AI chat link with a 1–2 sentence explanation of what the conversation shows and why you chose to share it.

Suggested AI Prompts

Use these prompts as a starting point, then adjust them to fit your goal. Strong prompting develops through trial, revision, and testing. It’s a foundational skill that grows into more advanced AI work such as context engineering and agent-based workflows.

Rule Comparison Mapper

You are helping me learn civil discovery for a college course that covers federal and Florida practice together. Build a comparison table with one row for each of these discovery tools: initial disclosures, interrogatories, requests for production, requests for admission, depositions, subpoenas to nonparties, and motions to compel and sanctions. Use these columns: the tool, the governing Federal Rule of Civil Procedure, the governing Florida Rule of Civil Procedure, and a plain-English note on any way the two differ. Add a final column that flags whether the Florida rule was changed by the January 1, 2025 amendments and how. For any rule number, requirement, or deadline you are not fully certain about, mark it with “[verify]” instead of guessing, and end with a short list of the three points a student should check against the official rule text first.

Forcing the answer into a fixed table is structured output: the model has to fill every row for both systems instead of writing about whichever tool it finds most interesting. The “[verify]” instruction adds uncertainty flagging, so shaky entries arrive marked rather than stated with false confidence.

Instrument Drafter

Act as a litigation attorney drafting a discovery document. First, ask me whether I want to work in federal court or Florida state court and which instrument to draft: a set of interrogatories, a request for production, or a notice of deposition. Once I answer, invent a short two- or three-sentence fact pattern for a simple case, then draft the instrument so that it complies with the specific governing rule, with the rule cited in the document itself. After the draft, list every specific requirement from that rule that your draft was built to satisfy, for example the timing, any numeric limits, the form of the response, and the certificate of service, as a checklist I can verify myself. Do not smooth over anything you are unsure of; call it out.

Role assignment works better when the model must ask which court and which instrument before drafting, because the draft then rests on your choices instead of generic boilerplate. The checklist it lists afterward turns one draft into the first step of a verification workflow, the seed of the multi-step work agents do later.

Citation and Rule Verifier

I am going to paste a discovery document you drafted, along with the checklist of rule requirements you said it satisfies. Do not assume your earlier answer was correct. Go through each cited rule number and each stated requirement and tell me, for each one, whether you are confident it is accurate, unsure, or possibly wrong, and explain why. Then list every citation and deadline in the draft that I should confirm against the primary source before relying on it, and tell me exactly where to look: the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure on the Cornell Legal Information Institute site, or the Florida Rules of Court Procedure on The Florida Bar’s site. Treat this as a hunt for anything you may have invented.

Language models produce rule numbers, deadlines, and citations that look authoritative and are sometimes wrong, a failure called hallucination. Sorting its own claims by confidence and naming the source for each is self-critique, and it leaves the final check with you.

Dispute-to-Sanctions Walkthrough

Act as a litigator handling a discovery dispute. Ask me whether the case is in federal court or Florida state court. Then use this scenario: the opposing party was properly served with interrogatories and requests for production sixty days ago and has produced nothing and answered nothing. Walk me through the steps in order: the good-faith effort to confer with opposing counsel and how that gets certified, drafting the motion to compel under the correct rule (Federal Rule 37 or Florida Rule 1.380), what the court is likely to do next, and how sanctions escalate if the party still refuses. For each step, tell me which details depend on that specific court’s local rules or standing case management order, because those are things I would have to look up rather than take from you.

Breaking the request into ordered steps is decomposition: it mirrors how the dispute unfolds and gets a more reliable answer than one open question. The flag on local rules marks a real limit, because the court’s own rules and orders govern the details and the model has no reliable way to know them.

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