The trial or main hearing examines and resolves the contested facts. Legal systems differ substantially, however, as to whether and how facts will come to light before trial. Civil-law systems have long relied on judicially guided investigation to uncover relevant facts. Historically, common-law systems relied, largely unsuccessfully, on notice pleadings and trial testimony for the same purpose. Because the parties lacked tools to compel their adversaries to disclose relevant information before trial, trials in common-law systems sometimes resulted in unexpected testimony and surprise revelations by witnesses. Anglo-American courts of equity, by contrast, heard no live testimony, relying instead on written summaries of testimony gathered out of court. The central legal reform of the 20th century in the United States combined these two common-law traditions, preserving the concentrated trial and its live testimony but giving to the parties the power to compel each other, and others unconnected with the lawsuit, to disclose relevant information in advance of trial.

The goals of this development were straightforward: to allow more thorough preparation and presentation of cases; to encourage pretrial settlement by making each party cognizant of the true value of his claim; to expose, at an early stage in the proceedings, insubstantial claims that should not go to trial; and to reduce the element of surprise as a factor in civil litigation. Coupled with the move to notice pleading, discovery made the pretrial stage, rather than trial, the center of gravity in most civil litigation in common-law systems.

In 1938, new U.S. federal rules dramatically established a model for the discovery process. During succeeding decades, the state courts, where most litigation occurs, followed suit, either adopting the federal rules as their procedural system or amending state legislation to permit broad pretrial discovery. Such regimes gave lawyers the power to require adversaries and other witnesses, in advance of trial, to disclose evidence on which they intended to rely, to respond to written or oral questions under oath, to produce documents and tangible objects (such as land, buildings, or machinery) for inspection, and to submit to physical or psychological examination when warranted. Most discovery devices may be utilized without prior court approval, and the procedures take place in lawyers’ offices. Judicial intervention ordinarily occurs only when there is a dispute about discovery.

Even in this broad-reaching regime of discovery, some limitations remain. Communications between a party and his attorney are protected by the attorney-client privilege. Materials and expert testimony prepared in anticipation of the pending litigation by or for a party are not discoverable unless the party seeking discovery shows a substantial need for the information and an inability to obtain substantially equivalent information by alternative means. Outside the United States, discovery is substantially more limited. In other common-law systems discovery is limited to documents that are admissible as evidence, and, unlike American discovery, often to documents that the opposing party can identify specifically. Civil-law systems rely on the judge to order the production of documents and witnesses as their relevance emerges from the series of hearings. As a result, with the exception of procedures to secure, in advance of lawsuit, evidence that is in danger of being lost (e.g., because a witness may die), there are few procedures in civil-law countries to enable a party to secure information to use later. Discovery of documents is usually possible only in very limited cases, though a party that actually intends to use a document has to make it available to the other side.

Pretrial conference

The discovery process may make the parties aware of significant issues not previously considered or may make it clear that an issue considered important before discovery is no longer so. In order to provide a means for reflecting these changes and also to assist in simplifying the issues to be tried, shortening the time for trial, and possibly eliminating the need for trial completely, the court may direct the parties to appear before it for a pretrial conference. Pretrial conferences involve no testimony of witnesses heard and no formal adversary proceeding. The attorneys representing the litigants, and sometimes the parties themselves, with the assistance of the judge, try to reach agreement on amendments to the pleadings, the elimination of issues that are no longer deemed pertinent, and the crystallization of the real, controversial issues that must be determined at the trial. The pretrial conference also offers an indirect benefit: the possibility that the parties will settle without trial. Although some authorities feel that this should be a primary goal of the pretrial conference, the prevailing view is that “settlements must be a by-product rather than the object of pretrial, the primary aim being to improve the quality of the expected trial rather than to avoid it.”

Civil-law systems need no separately demarcated pretrial conference, as they use one or more of the series of preparatory hearings for analogous purposes. Since preliminary hearings are ordinarily held before a single judge rather than a formal three-judge court, a considerable amount of judicial time can be saved. Under the French code of civil procedure, each case is assigned to a special “prehearing” judge, who sets time limits for the exchange of pleadings, decides how many pleadings after the original summons and complaint shall be used and when they shall be submitted, and may penalize dilatory parties by delivering a default judgment or, if both sides are dilatory, by striking the case off the calendar. Further, the judge may call in the parties’ counsel for a conference and must make sure that all documents that the parties intend to use at the main hearing have been filed. The judge also may convene a conference of the parties to discuss a possible settlement. The court must, in short, either settle the case or put it in shape for the formal hearing. Under the 1976 reforms to the German Code of Civil Procedure, the parties may be directed, through a preliminary written or oral procedure, to prepare the main hearing in such a manner that it can lead to an immediate decision of the case.