Draft Responses To Requests For Production

---
name: draft-responses-to-requests-for-production
task_id: litigation-dispute-resolution/draft-responses-to-requests-for-production
description: Draft responses to requests for production by reviewing the requests, the available document set, and any privilege or objection materials; state objections with supporting reasons where warranted; indicate whether responsive, non-objectionable documents will be produced; note any withheld material at a categorical level; and prepare the required companion litigation analysis deliverable.
activates_for: [planner, solver, checker]
---

# Skill: Draft Responses and Objections to Requests for Production in Breach of Contract and Fraud Litigation

## 1. Subject-matter triage

- Treat the RFP set, the document inventory, any privilege log or withholding list, the operative pleadings, and the relevant contract documents as the core source set.
- Separate requests that seek ordinary business records from requests that seek attorney communications, litigation strategy, draft analyses, or third-party confidential material.
- Identify mixed requests early: parts that can be produced, parts that require objection, and parts that require withholding.

## 2. Failure modes the skill is correcting

- Objecting without stating whether the non-objectionable portion will be produced; each response must distinguish between the objectionable and producible portions.
- Failing to say when material is being withheld and failing to tie that withholding to the privilege log or equivalent record.
- Drafting responses without checking what has actually been collected, which makes production commitments inaccurate and completeness statements unreliable.
- Treating boilerplate objections as sufficient without tailoring them to the actual request, governing order, and case posture.
- Omitting the companion discovery issues memo or reducing it to a summary of requests rather than a working advisory document.
- Giving conclusory privilege or proportionality statements without identifying the governing doctrine or rule.
- Writing responses as if every request is identical; mixed requests require request-specific handling.

## 3. Legal frameworks / domain conventions that apply

- Discovery responses must be timely under the applicable procedural rules, case schedule, or court order.
- Rule 34 practice generally requires a clear response to each request, including whether inspection or production will be permitted, objected to, or permitted in part.
- Partial objections should be narrowed to the specific objectionable aspect; where appropriate, the remainder should be produced.
- Common grounds include relevance, overbreadth, proportionality, undue burden, confidentiality subject to protective order, attorney-client privilege, work-product protection, and ESI-specific inaccessibility or burden.
- Withheld materials should be tracked in a privilege log or comparable withholding record sufficient to allow assessment under the governing discovery rules.
- Any legal proposition in the responses or memo should be anchored to the controlling rule, statute, regulation, or case law that supports it.
- Prior objection language may be a drafting aid, but it must be conformed to the actual request wording and the governing order in the matter.
- The pleadings and operative contract documents define the dispute’s scope and should inform relevance, proportionality, and production decisions.

## 4. Analytical scaffolds

- Read the full request set before drafting any response language; identify all request categories, subparts, and implied time periods or subject-matter limits.
- Build a request-by-request map: request text, issue type, likely objection, producible portion, withheld material, collection status, and memo implications.
- Review the collection summary or equivalent inventory before promising production; confirm what exists, what was searched, and what is still pending.
- Review the privilege log or withholding list and ensure each withheld item is accounted for consistently across the response set and memo.
- For each request, decide whether the proper response is: produce, produce with objection, object and withhold in part, or object and produce nothing; then state that position plainly.
- When asserting privilege or work product, tie the withholding to the applicable doctrine and the log, and describe the withheld material only at a categorical level.
- When asserting proportionality or burden, explain the scope problem, the practical burden, and why the request as drafted exceeds what must be produced.
- Draft the companion memo as an internal advisory: identify contested categories, litigation-sensitive material, privilege issues, strategic risks, and recommended positions on close calls.

## 5. Vertical / structural / temporal relationships

- Track each request against the temporal scope in the pleadings, contracts, and discovery period; overbroad time horizons should be flagged and narrowed where appropriate.
- Track each request against document families and custodial/functional buckets so that a response does not overcommit beyond the actual collection.
- Track each request against related requests to avoid inconsistent positions on the same subject matter or duplicative production promises.
- If multiple custodians, categories, or periods are implicated, address them separately rather than collapsing them into a single generic response.
- If the source set shows only one relevant collection pool or one clearly bounded issue area, say so and explain why no further subdivision is needed.

## 6. Output structure conventions

- Draft the RFP responses first; do not let the memo substitute for the response set.
- Use captioned discovery-response formatting with general objections only if genuinely useful and consistent with the case posture.
- Number specific responses to correspond to the requests, and make each response self-contained.
- Each specific response should state the objection, the scope of any production commitment, and any withholding at a categorical level.
- If a request is objectionable only in part, say so expressly and commit to produce the non-objectionable portion where appropriate.
- The memo should be organized by issue category, not by rhetorical summary, and should identify the governing authority for each legal position relied on.
- Because the memo is advisory, end it with a concise Recommended Actions block that assigns each step to the appropriate role and ties it to a deadline, discovery milestone, or near-term response obligation.
- Use the exact filenames requested: `rfp-responses.docx` and `discovery-issues-memo.docx`.
- Before finishing, confirm that the response file is substantive and non-empty, and that the memo is complete, action-oriented, and consistent with the response positions.