Each ALJ sets their own. Production format, exhibit handling and witness statements are decided there, not by a Commission-wide standard.
The first thing that should happen on a Section 337 investigation, before collection and well before processing, is that somebody reads the assigned judge’s ground rules and writes down what they require. Vendors who skip this step build a production to a generic specification and discover in month seven that the specification was wrong.
Discovery practice in 337 investigations varies from ALJ to ALJ. Commission rules set the outer limits; the ground rules set what actually happens in your investigation.
What gets decided there
- Whether direct testimony comes in as written witness statements or live. Some judges use witness statements, exchanged during the exhibit exchange, which changes what has to be prepared and when.
- Markman procedure, where one is held at all.
- Discovery limits adjusted from the Commission default, by order or in the ground rules themselves.
- Exhibit handling and the mechanics of the exhibit exchange.
- Motion practice deadlines, including summary determination and motions in limine.
- The consequence of omission — arguments left out of the prehearing brief can be deemed waived.
Why this is a vendor problem
Processing decisions are made once and are expensive to undo. Numbering conventions, production format, how confidential designations are applied, how families are handled, how exhibits are labeled for the hearing — each of those is set at the start of a matter and carried through every volume.
If the ground rules require something the processing was not configured for, the fix is reprocessing and reproduction, in a schedule that has no room for it. We read the ground rules at intake, confirm format, numbering and designation conventions with counsel in writing, and configure processing to match before the first document is touched.
The practical intake conversation
On a new 337 matter we ask four things before anything else: which ALJ, what the target date is, what the procedural schedule says, and what languages the population is in. The answers determine the entire workflow, and three of the four are available within forty-five days of institution.
We then confirm back in writing what we understood the ground rules to require on format and exhibits. That document costs nothing and it is the thing people reach for in month eight when somebody asks why a volume looks the way it does.
What we build to
Pro-Legal Services provides ITC litigation support from Arlington, Virginia, five miles from the Commission — eDiscovery and ESI processing, forensic collection, managed and AI-assisted review, CBI redaction and public version preparation, certified translation and foreign language document review, rolling production, hearing exhibits and demonstratives. We work for complainants and respondents, and we have been doing it since 1999.
Ground rules are not an administrative detail in this forum. They are the production specification.
Related: ITC Section 337 litigation support, ITC respondent discovery support, ITC hearing exhibits, confidential business information redaction, Section 337 translation services, ESI processing, defensible production, ESI protocol review.
Pro-Legal Services, Inc. supports Section 337 investigations from Arlington, Virginia, minutes from the U.S. International Trade Commission, for law firms in Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia and nationwide.
New 337 matter and the ALJ is assigned? Send us the ground rules and the procedural schedule. We will come back with the production specification they imply, before anything is processed. Pro-Legal Services, Inc. · 1550 Wilson Blvd, Suite 250, Arlington, VA 22209 · 202-955-9400 · info@pro-legal.com