If hell is the last stop for attorneys who are “eternally locked in discovery disputes,” then The Sedona Conference — a nonprofit research and educational institute — wants to be the guardian angel that keeps counsel cooperative and away from that realm. Working Group 1 of The Sedona Conference consists of judges, attorneys and other experts who meet, discuss and publish on issues relating to electronic discovery. Federal judges are now referring with increasing regularity to the e-discovery guidelines set forth in various publications of The Sedona Conference, including the recently issued The Sedona Conference Cooperation Proclamation. See The Sedona Conference, The Sedona Conference Cooperation Proclamation (July 2008).

The Cooperation Proclamation asks a timeless question: Can’t we all just get along? Although this pronouncement by The Sedona Conference is only a few pages long, its drafters seek no less than a “paradigm shift for the discovery process.”  Specifically, the Cooperation Proclamation encourages “a national drive to promote open and forthright information sharing, dialogue (internal and external), training and the development of practical tools to facilitate cooperative, collaborative, transparent discovery. “On the theory that overzealous discovery costs too much and yields too little, the Cooperation Proclamation aims to curb the knee-jerk and often counterproductive aggression sometimes exhibited by counsel in discovery. In this respect, its goal is the same as that of Rule 1 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure: to promote the “just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of every action.”

via Law.com – Sedona Continues Call for Cooperation.