Some questions for you litigators out there:

The last time you were slogging through an all-day, multi-lawyered deposition of a reluctant witness, or preparing your own witness by walking him through hundreds of documents page by page, or fishing through 14 overflowing file cabinets for a probably non-existent smoking gun, or cranking dozens of boilerplate interrogatories through the word processor, did it feel like a good use of your time? And your client’s money?

Did you enjoy your long day’s journey into the night? Was it fun? Was it illuminating? Did it bring your case closer to a just resolution? Did it make any difference at all?

Or was it just a waste?

My unscientific sampling of big-case litigators suggests that a lot of them feel that a large "percentage of the time they spend on discovery is unproductive tedium or pointless gamesmanship-needlessly prolonged because they cannot risk leaving any stone unturned, or because vexatious adversaries play hardball, or because the party with more resources is waging a war of attrition, or because the judge won’t manage the case or take it to trial, or because the need to rack up billable hours creates incentives for overkill, or just because that’s the way it’s done.

The discovery process is a monster out of control, devouring billions of dollars and countless hours of lawyers’ time in cases that would be better settled or tried with far less ado. Most litigators know this. But many seem resigned to spending a good portion of their lives suffering through wasteful discovery.

Now comes Judge William Schwarzer, director of the Federal Judicial Center, with a proposal to set them free, to eliminate the excesses of adversarial discovery, and to make lawsuits quicker and cheaper.