§ 2018.020.Policy of the state

Before laying out the mechanics of what is and is not protected, the chapter states why the work product doctrine exists at all. California's policy runs in two directions at once. On one side, the law wants attorneys to prepare cases for trial with enough privacy that they will thoroughly investigate every angle of a case, including its weaknesses, rather than pulling punches out of fear that candid internal analysis will end up in an opponent's hands.

On the other side, the same policy guards against attorneys free-riding on each other's work. An attorney who has done the hard work of tracking down witnesses, organizing evidence, or developing a theory of the case should not have to hand that labor over to an adversary who skipped the effort and demands the finished product through discovery.

These two goals, encouraging thorough private preparation and discouraging free-riding on an opponent's effort, explain why the sections that follow split work product into an absolutely protected category for an attorney's own mental impressions and a qualifiedly protected category for everything else the attorney generates.