Arlington, Virginia · Minutes from the U.S. International Trade Commission · Nationwide
Pro-Legal Services, Inc. supports Section 337 practices before the Commission, and we have handled ITC matters — including on the respondent side, which is where the document burden usually lands. Respondent-side 337 work starts at a disadvantage that has nothing to do with the merits. The complainant chose the timing and prepared before filing. The respondent is often an overseas manufacturer whose documents, custodians, and systems are in another country and another language, and who has never been through a U.S. proceeding. ITC respondent discovery support is largely a question of how much of that gap you close in the first month.
Know what you are holding before you promise anything
Scope the data landscape before the procedural schedule locks in commitments about what can be produced and when. Which systems, which custodians, which jurisdictions, how much is foreign-language, and what the client’s retention practice actually looks like rather than what their policy says. A vendor who can map this in days rather than weeks is worth more than one who quotes a lower per-gigabyte rate.
Assume collection will be harder than a domestic matter
Overseas custodians, local IT with no experience of U.S. discovery, data sitting under other countries’ privacy regimes, and devices that cannot be taken offline during their working day. Ask your vendor what remote and after-hours collection they can run in the client’s time zone, and what they do when a source cannot be imaged.
Settle the translation tiers early
Decide which material gets machine translation for triage and which gets full certified treatment before volume work begins, not after a budget conversation goes badly. The tiering decision is where most of the foreign-language cost is won or lost.
Treat CBI handling as a first-week decision
The protective order lands early and governs everything after it. Confirm that whoever touches the documents — processors, reviewers, linguists, the production team — is inside that framework, and that redaction is burned in with verification rather than applied as an overlay a reader can select through.
Build the production workflow before you need it
Paired public and confidential versions, per-page confidentiality endorsement, Bates ranges, and PDF formatting to the protective order’s conventions. Standing this up under deadline pressure is how formatting defects reach the Commission.
Ask who else receives the production
Beyond the complainant, productions may need to reach co-respondents and, where OUII participates, the Staff. Set the service and copy protocol in the first week rather than reconstructing one under deadline, and ask whether your vendor handles multiple recipients with different confidentiality designations as routine work.
Ask which ALJ, and read the ground rules against your workflow
Ground rules vary by ALJ and govern production format, exhibit conventions, and confidential handling. A vendor who reads the ground rules before building the production workflow has done this before. One who builds a generic workflow and adjusts later has not.
Have one accountable contact, not four
Respondent-side matters generate coordination overhead that complainant-side matters do not: foreign client, foreign counsel, local IT, U.S. counsel, and the vendor. Adding a vendor who routes everything through an account manager adds a fifth voice and a day of latency to every question.
How Pro-Legal Supports Respondents
We scope the data landscape first and tell you what is realistic before anyone commits to a production schedule. We run remote and after-hours forensic data collection across endpoints, mobile, email, Microsoft Purview and Microsoft 365, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Google Workspace, and Slack. We provide certified translation in more than 100 languages and foreign language document review, with tiering decided up front. We handle CBI redaction with text-layer verification, paired public and confidential version production, and defensible production with Bates labeling and quality control. One named contact, 24/7/365, documented chain of custody throughout. We read the ground rules before we build the workflow. Our offices are in Arlington, Virginia, minutes from the Commission.
Related reading: our overview of ITC Section 337 litigation support covers the full service range, our article on foreign-language discovery in a 337 goes deeper on translation planning, and our piece on choosing litigation support for ITC filing covers vendor evaluation.
We act for respondent-side teams across Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia, including Alexandria, Fairfax, Tysons, Northern Virginia, Richmond, Bethesda, Rockville, Silver Spring, Baltimore, and Annapolis, and for ITC practices nationwide whose matters are heard in Washington, including New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Miami, and Wilmington.
Defending a 337 investigation? Contact Pro-Legal Services, Inc., 1550 Wilson Blvd, Suite 250, Arlington, VA 22209, at info@pro-legal.com or 202-955-9400. Tell us where the client and the data sit and we will tell you what the first thirty days realistically look like. Available 24/7/365.