Rule 26(f) Conference Checklist: What the Rule Requires

States the rules as of July 2026. 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 Rule 26(f) conference is the first thing in a federal case that both sides have to do together, and it is the one most often treated as a formality. It isn’t one. The discovery plan that comes out of it sets the cutoffs you will live with, fixes the form of production for every document in the case, and — if you handle it well — resolves the privilege-log fight before it starts.

This is what the rule requires, in the order you need it.

Who has to confer, and when

Rule 26(f)(1) requires the parties to confer as soon as practicable, and in any event at least 21 days before a scheduling conference is held or a scheduling order is due under Rule 16(b).

That deadline runs backwards from the court’s date, not forwards from yours. Rule 16(b)(2) requires the judge to issue the scheduling order within the earlier of 90 days after any defendant has been served or 60 days after any defendant has appeared — so the conference date is usually fixed by an event that already happened, and counsel discover it late. See working out the deadline for how to count it.

The obligation is on the parties, and Rule 26(f)(2) makes them “jointly responsible” for arranging the conference and for submitting the written report. There is no version of this where the other side’s silence is your excuse.

What you must discuss

Rule 26(f)(2) requires the parties to:

consider the nature and basis of their claims and defenses;
consider the possibilities for promptly settling or resolving the case;
make or arrange for the disclosures required by Rule 26(a)(1);
discuss any issues about preserving discoverable information; and
develop a proposed discovery plan.

The preservation item is the one that most often gets a single sentence and later becomes a motion. If there is a litigation hold dispute coming, it is already visible here.

What the written report must contain

Rule 26(f)(3) requires the discovery plan to state the parties’ views and proposals on six things:

(A) Initial disclosures — what changes should be made in the timing, form or requirement for Rule 26(a)(1) disclosures, including a statement of when they were made or will be made.
(B) Scope and timing — the subjects on which discovery may be needed, when discovery should be completed, and whether it should be conducted in phases or limited to particular issues.
(C) Electronically stored information — any issues about disclosure, discovery or preservation of ESI, including the form or forms in which it should be produced. This is the item that pays for itself; see the ESI protocol checklist.
(D) Privilege — any issues about claims of privilege or protection of trial-preparation material, including — if the parties agree on a procedure to assert those claims after production — whether to ask the court to include that agreement in an order under Federal Rule of Evidence 502(d).
(E) Limitations — what changes should be made in the limitations on discovery imposed by the rules or by local rule, and what other limitations should be imposed.
(F) Other orders — any other orders the court should issue under Rule 26(c) or under Rule 16(b) and (c).

Rule 26(f)(2) requires the report to be submitted to the court within 14 days after the conference.

The two dates the conference sets in motion

Initial disclosures. Under Rule 26(a)(1)(C), a party must make its initial disclosures within 14 days after the Rule 26(f) conference unless a different time is set by stipulation or court order.
Discovery generally. Under Rule 26(d)(1), a party may not seek discovery from any source before the parties have conferred as required by Rule 26(f), subject to the exceptions in the rule. Until you confer, the case does not move.

That second point is worth sitting with. Opposing counsel who will not schedule the conference is not just being difficult — they are holding up the start of discovery for both sides.

A working checklist

Bring proposed language, not topics. The conference goes faster and the report mostly writes itself:

That last box catches more people than any other. The Federal Rules set the floor; your district and often your individual judge add to it. In the Northern District of California, for example, the joint statement has its own required contents — see the N.D. Cal. joint case management statement guide.

Where the conference actually goes wrong

It is rarely the substance. It is that the conference happens on one call, the positions get summarised from memory into a joint report a week later, and by then each side remembers the agreement slightly differently. The disputes that survive get compressed into a paragraph nobody drafted carefully, and the record of what was proposed and refused — the thing you need if this becomes a motion to compel — exists only as a call summary in your own notes.

Conferring section by section in writing fixes both problems. Each item of Rule 26(f)(3) gets proposed language, an acceptance or a counter, and a timestamp. What you file is what the parties actually agreed, and the record of how you got there is a document rather than a recollection.

That is what AsyncConfer does: you draft, opposing counsel redlines through a private link, and the joint statement compiles from the sections both sides signed off on. If your judge still wants a live conference, you arrive at it having already narrowed the disputes to the two that are real.