Ada County District Court, Idaho Pre-Motion Conference Requirements

Civil cases

When ESI is requested or exchanged, the parties must confer in person or by phone within 10 days of a formal ESI discovery request, and responding parties must disclose specified ESI information at the conference.

If this case involves any request for, or the exchange of, electronically stored information (“ESI”), then the parties must engage in an ESI conference in which they must confer either in-person or over the phone within 10 days from a formal discovery request for ESI. At the ESI conference, the party responding to a request for ESI must identify and disclose: i. The reasonably accessible sources of relevant ESI (including but not limited to all sources where relevant ESI is located, stored, or saved); ii. The methods that will be, or have been, used to cull relevant ESI (including but not limited to any search terms or other methodologies used to identify, search for, and produce ESI); iii. The scope of discoverable ESI (including the identification of the types of ESI that will be identified, preserved, searched, and produced and the time frame applicable to the ESI that will be preserved, identified, and produced); iv. The formats that all relevant ESI will be preserved and produced; and v. The potential need for a protective order or any other procedures for handling privileged or inadvertently produced information. Counsel for each party must review and understand how his or her client’s ESI is stored and retrieved before the ESI conference.

Civil cases

Unresolved ESI disputes must be presented at a Court status conference, which must be scheduled before filing a motion to compel or for a protective order concerning that ESI.

Any disputes regarding ESI (including but not limited to disputes regarding: the burden, expense, efforts, or delay associated with identifying, preserving or producing ESI, work-product or privilege issues, or any issues regarding the need, discoverability, or relevance of the information) that the parties are unable to resolve, must be presented to the Court at a status conference. A discovery status conference to discuss any ESI dispute must be scheduled with the Court prior to the filing of any motion to compel or motion for protective order concerning such ESI.