A certificate of conference is a short filing that goes with a motion and certifies you tried in good faith to resolve the underlying dispute with opposing counsel before asking the judge to intervene. Federal courts require one for discovery motions, and most district courts extend the requirement by local rule to nearly every non-dispositive motion. Filing without one, or filing one that shows only a token effort, can get your motion denied and leave you paying the other side’s fees.
When You Need One
Two federal rules create the core obligation. Rule 37(a)(1) requires any motion to compel disclosure or discovery to “include a certification that the movant has in good faith conferred or attempted to confer with the person or party failing to make disclosure or discovery in an effort to obtain it without court action.”1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 37 Rule 26(c)(1) imposes the same duty on anyone seeking a protective order, requiring certification of a good faith conference or attempt to confer with affected parties before filing.2Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 26
Discovery motions are the most common trigger. If you want a party to hand over documents, answer interrogatories, or appear for a deposition, you need to certify you tried to work it out first. The same goes if you’re on the receiving end and want a protective order narrowing what you have to produce.
Local rules push the requirement well beyond discovery. Motions for extensions of time, motions to amend pleadings, motions for continuances, and other procedural requests often need a certificate too. The reasoning is practical: these are the kinds of issues lawyers can usually sort out on their own. Courts typically exempt motions that are inherently adversarial and cannot be resolved by agreement, such as motions for summary judgment, motions to dismiss, and motions for injunctive relief. Local requirements vary significantly from district to district, including minimum notice periods before filing, so check your court’s rules early in a case.
What Counts as a Good Faith Conference
Sending a letter or email stating your position and then filing the motion does not satisfy the requirement. Courts have repeatedly found that one-sided written communications, even in multiple rounds, do not qualify. A conference means an actual back-and-forth conversation in which both sides discuss the dispute, compare positions, and try to narrow or eliminate their disagreements.
Phone calls and in-person meetings are strongly preferred over written exchanges. A real-time conversation forces both sides to engage with each other’s arguments in a way that email chains rarely do. Some districts make this preference explicit, requiring parties to “actually speak to each other” before the court will entertain a discovery motion. Video conferences are a reasonable alternative where geography or scheduling makes a live meeting impractical, though your district may address the format directly.
Timing and staffing matter. The conference has to happen before you draft or file the motion; the point is to prevent unnecessary motions, not to retroactively justify one already prepared. Whoever attends should have enough authority to make decisions on the disputed issues. Sending someone who has to “check with the partner” on every point defeats the purpose.
When Opposing Counsel Won’t Engage
Rule 37(a)(1) anticipates this by requiring certification that you “conferred or attempted to confer.”1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 37 If the other side ignores your calls and emails, you can still file, but your certificate has to document the attempts in detail. There is no magic number that works across all courts. A complex dispute with multiple categories of documents will call for more persistent outreach than a disagreement over a single interrogatory. As a practical benchmark, two or three documented attempts using different methods, spaced over several days, gives you a solid record.
If opposing counsel agrees to a conference and then refuses to engage meaningfully, document that too. A phone call in which the other side simply repeats “we’re not producing anything” without discussing specific objections may not count as good faith from their end, and the certificate should describe what happened so the court can evaluate both sides’ conduct.
What the Certificate Has to Say
The certificate needs to give the court enough information to confirm that a real conference took place and that the parties genuinely tried to resolve the dispute. Formatting varies by court, but the substance should cover:
- The date the conference occurred and how it was conducted (phone, video, in person).
- The names of the attorneys or parties who took part.
- A concise summary of the disputed matters and each side’s position.
- Which issues were resolved by agreement and which remain in dispute.
- An explicit certification that the conference was conducted in good faith.
Specificity carries weight. “The parties conferred and were unable to reach agreement” tells the judge nothing about whether you actually tried. A certificate that identifies particular requests, describes the positions exchanged, and explains why agreement failed on each open item shows the court exactly where things stand and makes the motion far more credible.
How To File It
The certificate is filed alongside the motion it supports. Depending on the court’s preferences and local rules, it can take one of three forms: a separate standalone document, an exhibit attached to the motion, or a dedicated paragraph inside the motion itself. Electronic filing systems typically expect both documents submitted at the same time.
Filing it correctly matters because it is a threshold requirement. The court looks at the certificate before considering the merits. If it is missing, incomplete, or shows that you didn’t make a serious effort, the court can deny the motion without ever reaching your argument.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 37
What Happens if You Skip or Fake It
The consequences run past denial. Rule 37(a)(5) makes the losing side in a discovery dispute pay the winner’s reasonable expenses, including attorney’s fees, and the good faith conference requirement is built directly into that framework.
If a court grants your motion to compel, it must generally order the opposing party to pay your reasonable expenses for bringing the motion. But the court will not award those fees if you filed before making a good faith attempt to resolve the dispute without court involvement.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 37 Skipping the conference doesn’t just risk denial; it forfeits your right to recover the costs of a motion you would have won.
The same principle runs the other direction. If your motion to compel is denied, the court must require you to pay the opposing party’s reasonable expenses in fighting it, unless your motion was substantially justified.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 37 When a motion is granted in part and denied in part, the court has discretion to split costs.
For attorneys who repeatedly file without proper conferral or who treat the certificate as a rubber stamp, exposure can escalate. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1927, an attorney who unreasonably and vexatiously multiplies proceedings can be ordered to personally pay the excess costs, expenses, and attorney’s fees caused by that conduct.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1927 – Counsels Liability for Excessive Costs Habitually ignoring the meet-and-confer obligation is the kind of behavior that invites this remedy.
Don’t Confuse It With the Rule 26(f) Conference
The pre-motion certificate of conference is sometimes mixed up with the Rule 26(f) planning conference. They serve different purposes. The Rule 26(f) conference happens early in the case, before formal discovery begins, and requires the parties to develop a joint discovery plan covering the scope of anticipated discovery, any issues involving electronically stored information, and proposed deadlines.2Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 26 Formal discovery cannot start until it has occurred.
The certificate of conference arises later, whenever a specific dispute needs resolution. You may conduct several pre-motion conferences during a single case as different issues surface. The Rule 26(f) conference is a one-time planning event; the certificate of conference is an ongoing obligation tied to each individual motion.