Since 2013, I have enjoyed the privilege of teaching Discovery within the Santa Rosa Junior College’s Paralegal Studies Department. The Redwood Empire Paralegal Association (REAP) recently invited me to provide a Discovery Workshop. On June 4, 2018, I presented the first phase of our advanced workshop for local paralegals and attorneys at the Sonoma County Bar Association. It pleased me to see many of my former students in the audience and to listen to their experiences, challenges and successes within our profession. In this workshop I discussed the importance of creating an investigative strategy before drafting the Complaint which starts the Discovery process, understanding your Discovery tools, and orchestrating their implementation in pretrial preparation. In our first workshop, we covered the tools in general: form and special interrogatories, inspection demands, requests for admission coupled with form interrogatory 17.1, physical examinations, depositions and subpoenas, and expert witness discovery, and then focused on the first three tools.
Due to the success of this workshop, REAP has asked that I present a second
workshop focusing on the last three Discovery Tools which will likely take place shortly after the Labor Day Holiday. For updates regarding the second session, please check the REAP website here.