 protection known as privilege. Courts and legislatures have decided that the free flow of confidential information in these relationships is so important that it must be protected, even though that information might be important to others in a lawsuit. Under the law, no one can be required to disclose any information, whether verbal or written, that was confidentially exchanged within the following relationships:
Private matters. In recent years, courts have increasingly recognized that some aspects of personal life should remain private, beyond the reach even of lawyers. But the right to privacy is a fairly recent and still-developing legal notion. As a result, there is no clear definition of precisely what it covers -- and the extent of its protection varies considerably from state to state. Roughly, the right to privacy protects a person from having to divulge information that is not obviously relevant to the lawsuit and is a matter that a person would not normally discuss or reveal to anyone outside of immediate family and intimate friends. This might include issues such as:
Privacy rights of third parties. Courts are more willing to protect the privacy of third parties -- for example, witnesses, co-workers, or family members of a party -- than the privacy of parties to a lawsuit. Courts often put limits on how much a party can find out about someone who isn't involved in a lawsuit, reasoning that it isn't fair to invade the privacy of someone who was dragged into a dispute.
Keeping discovery information from the public. Even if a party is required to disclose certain information to the other side in a lawsuit, that information can be treated confidentially by the court -- that is, the party who receives it can be prevented from revealing it to anyone else, and the court can keep it out of the public record. This might be done to protect, for example, sensitive financial information, confidential information belonging to a business, or personal medication information that is relevant to the lawsuit. For this to happen, a judge must usually order that information be kept confidential, in what's often called a "protective order."
There are four types of formal discovery tools that are frequently used in lawsuits. They are: