Requests can issue immediately and responses come due in days, not the thirty a federal civil case allows.

In a federal civil case, a party has thirty days to respond to document requests and the schedule is negotiable. In a Section 337 investigation, discovery requests may be served the day after the institution notice publishes, and the response window is a fraction of that. Check your procedural schedule and the ALJ’s ground rules for the exact dates in your investigation. Whatever they say, the number is small.

That single difference is why 337 matters go wrong at the front end rather than the back.

What the front end actually looks like

Institution follows the complaint within about thirty days. The ALJ sets the procedural schedule and the target date within forty-five days of institution. Fact discovery on an eighteen-month target is typically complete within about seven months, with expert reports following shortly after it closes and the evidentiary hearing generally falling nine to twelve months after institution.

Read backward from that and the collection window is not months. It is the first few weeks, running concurrently with the response to the complaint, before most teams have finished identifying custodians.

What has to happen immediately

• Custodian identification before the institution notice publishes, not after the first request arrives
• A hold that names platforms explicitly, including collaboration tools, messaging apps and AI assistants, because a notice saying email and documents will not reach them
• Collection scheduled the same week it is requested, including from foreign custodians where access and timing are harder
• Processing turned overnight as standard, same day where the population is urgent
• Early case assessment producing a defensible volume number, which is the only credible basis for any scope discussion
• Language triage started at collection, because translation is routinely the longest pole and discovering a Mandarin population in month four is how a schedule fails

Why foreign custodians compound it

Respondents in 337 investigations are frequently in China, Taiwan, Korea or Japan. Collection from foreign custodians takes longer, involves systems and platforms that differ from domestic ones, and produces populations that cannot be reviewed until they have been at least partially translated.

We scope language and geography at intake rather than at the first production. Machine translation with post-editing for triage, full post-editing for documents that will be used, certified translation for anything filed or put to a witness, and translated documents delivered into the review set with metadata and Bates consistency intact.

What a vendor should already have ready

Pro-Legal Services supports Section 337 investigations from Arlington, Virginia, five miles from the Commission. Forensic collection scheduled same-week, overnight ESI processing, managed and AI-assisted review, CBI redaction and public versions, certified translation in more than 100 languages with in-house ATA-certified translators, rolling production to the ALJ’s ground rules, and hearing exhibits. Available 24/7/365, which in this forum is a requirement rather than a selling line.

The firms that run 337 matters comfortably are the ones who engaged a vendor before institution. The ones that struggle engaged one after the first set of requests arrived.

Related: ITC Section 337 litigation support, ITC respondent discovery support, forensic data collection services, ESI processing, foreign language document review, Section 337 translation services, litigation hold services, emergency eDiscovery.

Pro-Legal Services, Inc. supports Section 337 investigations from Arlington, Virginia, minutes from the U.S. International Trade Commission, serving law firms in Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia and nationwide.

Complaint filed against your client? Call before institution, not after the first requests arrive. We will have collection scheduled and processing configured while the notice is still in the Federal Register. Pro-Legal Services, Inc. · 1550 Wilson Blvd, Suite 250, Arlington, VA 22209 · 202-955-9400 · info@pro-legal.com