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Jen
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uhoh
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If an attorney in the US is being required to produce substantial but selected legal records and documents for a mix of criminal and civil litigations against the attorney, and these documents are stored and archived via an expensive legal document storage service and if they can no longer afford to pay for the service of document search and retrieval (and is in fact already deeply in arrears having failed to make monthly payments), what happens next?

This is a hypothetical scenario only loosely based on current events.

If the only source of the material is the service who is owed so much money already they refuse to provide search and retrieval, a judge might find the defendant in contempt. But if the defendant was still unable to secure funds to bring their account current, a contempt finding doesn't seem to move things forward.

Can the accusing parties (civil) or prosecutors (criminal) then ask for a subpoena to force the host of the archived documents to perform the relevant searches and produce the required documents?

Would it matter if the documents were in one state and the proceedings were in another?

If an attorney in the US is being required to produce substantial but selected legal records and documents for a mix of criminal and civil litigations, and these documents are stored and archived via an expensive legal document storage service and if they can no longer afford to pay for the service of document search and retrieval (and is in fact already deeply in arrears having failed to make monthly payments), what happens next?

This is a hypothetical scenario only loosely based on current events.

If the only source of the material is the service who is owed so much money already they refuse to provide search and retrieval, a judge might find the defendant in contempt. But if the defendant was still unable to secure funds to bring their account current, a contempt finding doesn't seem to move things forward.

Can the accusing parties (civil) or prosecutors (criminal) then ask for a subpoena to force the host of the archived documents to perform the relevant searches and produce the required documents?

Would it matter if the documents were in one state and the proceedings were in another?

If an attorney in the US is being required to produce substantial but selected legal records and documents for a mix of criminal and civil litigations against the attorney, and these documents are stored and archived via an expensive legal document storage service and if they can no longer afford to pay for the service of document search and retrieval (and is in fact already deeply in arrears having failed to make monthly payments), what happens next?

This is a hypothetical scenario only loosely based on current events.

If the only source of the material is the service who is owed so much money already they refuse to provide search and retrieval, a judge might find the defendant in contempt. But if the defendant was still unable to secure funds to bring their account current, a contempt finding doesn't seem to move things forward.

Can the accusing parties (civil) or prosecutors (criminal) then ask for a subpoena to force the host of the archived documents to perform the relevant searches and produce the required documents?

Would it matter if the documents were in one state and the proceedings were in another?

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uhoh
uhoh
  • 834
  • 9
  • 21

An attorney can't afford to pay for professional services to search & retrieve required documents for civil & criminal proceedings, what happens next?

If an attorney in the US is being required to produce substantial but selected legal records and documents for a mix of criminal and civil litigations, and these documents are stored and archived via an expensive legal document storage service and if they can no longer afford to pay for the service of document search and retrieval (and is in fact already deeply in arrears having failed to make monthly payments), what happens next?

This is a hypothetical scenario only loosely based on current events.

If the only source of the material is the service who is owed so much money already they refuse to provide search and retrieval, a judge might find the defendant in contempt. But if the defendant was still unable to secure funds to bring their account current, a contempt finding doesn't seem to move things forward.

Can the accusing parties (civil) or prosecutors (criminal) then ask for a subpoena to force the host of the archived documents to perform the relevant searches and produce the required documents?

Would it matter if the documents were in one state and the proceedings were in another?