While not found in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), ESI protocols are tools the Judiciary and Bar developed in the early days of e-discovery to limit unnecessary discovery disputes and reduce discovery costs.
At their heart, ESI protocols are intended to be a voluntary agreement between the parties, which may be entered as orders by the court to improve enforcement, regarding how certain aspects of discovery should be accomplished. In exchange for voluntary transparency regarding how the responding party will conduct discovery and an agreement on specific reasonable efforts, the receiving party agrees to those efforts are reasonable and proportional limits to discovery. In theory, the requesting party gains transparency and knowledge that discovery will be done in a reasonable way, and responding parties gain cost certainty and limits on the scope of discovery.
