From Jennifer H. Rearden and Farrah Pepper in the New York Law Journal:
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…”
