The Association is grateful to Messrs. Morrison & Forester LLP for contributing to this update. The attached case report was first published in the Litigation newsletter of the International Law Office and is republished with their kind permission. The development In a recent decision, as per the attached article , a US court considered the application of the Federal Civil Procedure Rules in the context of whether communications with expert witnesses are protected from "discovery" (the procedure under which documentation and information has to be shared in legal proceedings with the court and other parties, in the UK it is known as "disclosure"). It had been the practice in Federal courts to allow such disovery of attorney - expert communications as well as of draft expert reports. In that regard the US rules allowed for a much wider disclosure of such communications than under English rules, although it must be noted that the English Procedure Rules have changed significantly in this regard, too, with much more material being subject to disclosure now when it comes to experts than had been the case prior to the fundamental overhaul in the UK started by the Woolf Reforms. In the US it appeared as if the process was moving the other way, and while it would seem that the relatively new 2010 Federal Rules of Civil Procedure imposed greater restriction on the disclosure of such documentation, there are important exceptions which do allow for disclosure of elements of the instructing lawyer's data and assumptions provided to the expert witness. Furthermore the court in this case sought to, from a practical side, limit the extent of the protection that may appear to exist in the written rules. Further details of this discussion are in the attached article from Morrison & Forester LLP, the original of which can be found here. Practical application If a situation arises from which litigation is likely to follow, especially if it can be envisaged that significan