N.D. Cal. Joint Case Management Statement

Updated July 28, 2026 · N.D. Cal. · N.D. Cal. Civ. L.R. 16-9, N.D. Cal. Civ. L.R. 16-10, Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(f)

States the rules as of the Standing Order for All Judges updated November 30, 2023. 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 Northern District of California requires more than Rule 26(f) does, in a prescribed form, and on a tighter schedule. Counsel who prepare only the federal discovery plan arrive short.

When it is due

Civil Local Rule 16-9 requires the parties to file a joint case management statement no later than seven days before the case management conference.

The statement is joint by default. Where a party cannot obtain another party’s cooperation in preparing it despite reasonable efforts, the complying party may file a separate statement accompanied by a declaration describing the uncooperative party’s conduct. That declaration is worth noting now: it is a document about the other side’s failure to engage, and it is far easier to write from a dated record than from recollection.

Filing separately does not excuse the conferral either — see what “confer” means in this district, which N.D. Cal. defines expressly and narrowly in Civil Local Rule 1-5(n).

The Standing Order contents

The Standing Order for All Judges of the Northern District of California — Contents of Joint Case Management Statement, updated November 30, 2023, prescribes what goes in. All judges of the district require identical information, and the order states that the statement “except in unusually complex cases, should not exceed ten pages.”

There are nineteen items:

Jurisdiction and Service — the basis for subject matter jurisdiction over the claims and counterclaims, any personal jurisdiction or venue issues, and any parties remaining to be served plus a proposed service deadline
Facts — a brief chronology and the principal factual issues in dispute
Legal Issues — the disputed points of law, with specific statutes and decisions, but without extended argument
Motions — all prior and pending motions, their status, and anticipated ones
Amendment of Pleadings — expected additions or dismissals, and a proposed deadline to amend
Evidence Preservation — a brief report certifying the parties have reviewed the ESI Guidelines and confirming they met and conferred under Rule 26(f) about reasonable and proportionate preservation steps (see ESI Guidelines 2.01 and 2.02 and the Checklist for ESI Meet and Confer)
Disclosures — whether Rule 26 initial disclosures are complete, and a description of them
Discovery — discovery to date, anticipated scope, proposed limitations, a report on whether the parties considered a stipulated e-discovery order, the Rule 26(f) discovery plan, and any identified disputes
Class Actions — how and when certification is proposed, and whether all counsel have reviewed the Procedural Guidance for Class Action Settlements
Related Cases — before another judge of the court or another tribunal
Relief — all relief sought, damages amounts and the bases for calculation; any party from whom damages are sought must also describe how it contends damages should be calculated if liability is established
Settlement and ADR — prospects, efforts to date, and a specific ADR plan including compliance with ADR L.R. 3-5 and the discovery or motions needed to position the parties to negotiate
Other References — binding arbitration, a special master, or the JPML
Narrowing of Issues — what can be narrowed by agreement or motion, ways to expedite the evidence at trial, and any bifurcation request. The parties must jointly identify, in bold or highlight, the one to three issues most consequential to the case and discuss how resolving them could be expedited
Scheduling — proposed dates for expert designation, discovery cutoff, dispositive motion hearing, pretrial conference and trial
Trial — jury or court, and expected length
Disclosure of Non-party Interested Entities or Persons — whether each party filed the Civil L.R. 3-15 certification, restated in the statement itself. In any proposed class, collective or representative action this includes any person or entity funding the prosecution of a claim or counterclaim
Professional Conduct — whether all counsel have reviewed the Guidelines for Professional Conduct
Such other matters as may facilitate the just, speedy and inexpensive disposition of the matter

Two of these repay attention because they are easy to miss. Item 14 is a joint obligation to agree on and visually flag the case’s most consequential issues — the parties have to reach a shared view, not file competing ones. Item 17 reaches litigation funding in proposed class, collective and representative actions.

Confirm the list against the Standing Order itself before you file: the district revises it, and this version replaced a longer one. Individual judges add their own requirements on top — always read your judge’s standing order as well, since several require additional content or a different format.

The ESI Guidelines

Item 6 is not boilerplate. N.D. Cal. maintains ESI Guidelines together with a checklist for the Rule 26(f) meet and confer and a model stipulated ESI order. The Guidelines expect counsel to be sufficiently versed in their client’s systems to discuss them competently, and the joint statement asks what steps have actually been taken to preserve evidence.

Treat the checklist as the agenda for the ESI portion of your conferral rather than something to be reconciled afterwards. See the ESI protocol checklist for the substance.

Practical notes

The statement is joint, and it is due before the conference. That means the real deadline is agreeing text with opposing counsel, which is always earlier than the filing date and is the step that slips.
Disputes belong in the statement, stated fairly. Where the parties differ, set out each position rather than papering over it. Judges use the statement to run the conference, and a disagreement surfaced cleanly gets decided.
Do not recycle another district’s form. The category list above has no federal-rules equivalent, and a statement that tracks only Rule 26(f)(3) is visibly short.
Ten pages. Nineteen categories inside a ten-page limit means the drafting discipline is compression, not coverage. Long recitations of the facts are the usual reason a statement runs over.
Count backwards. Seven days before the CMC to file; the Rule 26(f) conference at least 21 days before the scheduling order or conference. See the deadline guide.

Getting to agreed text

The hard part is not knowing the categories. It is that nineteen of them have to be agreed with someone who is adverse to you, usually over email, in the week before filing, while both sides work from different drafts of the same document — and item 14 requires you to actually converge on which issues matter most, not merely to state your own view of it.

AsyncConfer runs the statement section by section: you propose language for each category, opposing counsel accepts it or returns a redline, and the agreed text plus any side-by-side disputed positions compile into a filing-ready joint statement. Because the district defines conferral to require a live conversation, the workspace is what makes that conversation short — you arrive at it with seventeen categories agreed and two to talk about. And if the other side will not engage at all, the timestamped record of what you proposed and when is exactly what the Rule 16-9 declaration has to describe.