C.D. Cal. Joint Rule 26(f) Report and L.R. 7-3
States the rules as of the C.D. Cal. Local Rules as revised June 1, 2025. This is a practical summary, not legal advice, and AsyncConfer is not a law firm. Rules, local rules and standing orders change — confirm against your court's current requirements before you rely on it.
The Central District takes a different shape from its northern neighbour. There is no district-wide prescribed joint statement running to nineteen items; instead Local Rule 26-1 adds six specific topics to the federal Rule 26(f) report, and the judge’s own order setting the scheduling conference usually supplies the rest.
The rule that catches people out is not 26-1 at all. It is Local Rule 7-3.
L.R. 26-1: six additions to the Rule 26(f) report
The parties must discuss these at the Rule 26(f) conference, in addition to everything Rule 26(f) itself requires, and state their views and proposals — including any areas of disagreement — in the written report:
(a) Complex Cases — the complexity of the case and whether all or part of the procedures in the current Manual for Complex Litigation should be used. Counsel may propose modifications to those procedures to fit the action.
(b) Motion Schedule — the dispositive or partially dispositive motions likely to be made, and a cutoff date by which all such motions must be made.
(c) ADR — selection of one of the three ADR procedures in L.R. 16-15.4 as best suited to the case, and when the session should occur. The court considers the report in making an ADR referral, so this is not a throwaway. In Court-Directed ADR Program cases the parties also address the Notice to Parties, and should understand that a settlement conference with a magistrate judge is generally not available.
(d) Trial Estimate — a preliminary estimate of the time required for trial.
(e) Additional Parties — the likelihood that additional parties will appear.
(f) Expert Witnesses — the proposed timing of the Rule 26(a)(2) disclosures.
Note the framing: the rule asks for views, proposals and disagreements. A report that papers over a genuine dispute about, say, the dispositive motion cutoff is less useful to the judge than one that states both positions cleanly.
L.R. 7-3: the pre-filing conference
This applies to any motion, not just discovery motions, and it is strict.
Counsel contemplating filing a motion must first contact opposing counsel to discuss thoroughly — preferably in person — the substance of the contemplated motion and any potential resolution. The conference must take place in person, by telephone or by video conference at least seven days before the motion is filed.
And then the part that decides cases:
Letters and e-mail are insufficient to satisfy the prefiling conference requirements of Local Rule 7-3.
So the Central District joins the Northern in holding that written correspondence alone does not discharge a conferral obligation. If you practise in both, note that they get there by different routes — N.D. Cal. defines “confer” in Civil L.R. 1-5(n), C.D. Cal. attaches the requirement to motion practice in L.R. 7-3 — but the practical answer is the same. See can you meet and confer by email.
The declaration L.R. 7-3 requires
If the conference does not resolve the dispute, the moving party’s counsel must file a declaration, under penalty of perjury, setting out at a minimum:
- the date or dates the conference took place; and
- the position of each party with respect to each disputed issue.
Read that second requirement carefully. It is per-issue, and it is on penalty of perjury. Reconstructing “the position of each party with respect to each disputed issue” from a call held a week earlier and an email chain either side of it is precisely the drafting task that goes wrong — and here getting it wrong is not just unpersuasive.
Practical sequencing
- Read the judge’s order setting the scheduling conference. In this district it usually specifies the report’s format and often adds content beyond L.R. 26-1. Individual practices vary widely.
- Confer under Rule 26(f) and cover the six L.R. 26-1 topics alongside the federal ones. See the Rule 26(f) checklist.
- Calendar seven days before any motion for the L.R. 7-3 conference, and hold it live. Not email.
- Write the L.R. 7-3 declaration from a contemporaneous record, issue by issue.
Where the workspace fits
Both requirements reward the same discipline: positions recorded per issue, as they are taken, rather than characterised afterwards. Working the report and the disputed items in writing gives you exactly that — each topic with a proposal, a response and a timestamp — and then the live conference L.R. 7-3 demands is short and genuinely about what is unresolved.
AsyncConfer compiles the agreed language into a filing-ready report and exports the conferral log as a timestamped, hash-chained record. When the L.R. 7-3 declaration has to state each party’s position on each disputed issue under penalty of perjury, that record is what you write it from.