Litigation terms
Subpoena duces tecum
A subpoena duces tecum is a court-backed command that a witness produce documents or records — "bring with you," in the Latin — as distinct from a subpoena that merely compels testimony.
The pairing to know: a subpoena ad testificandum compels a person to appear and testify; a subpoena duces tecum compels them to bring things — documents, records, electronically stored information, sometimes physical objects. In federal practice both live under Rule 45, which also supplies the machinery for serving them, objecting to them, and quashing them.
Why it matters in practice
Duces tecum subpoenas are how you reach evidence held by non-parties — the treating clinic, the former employer, the cell carrier, the bank. That makes them indispensable and easy to get wrong in the same ways: serving the wrong corporate entity, skipping the required notice to other parties, demanding production faster than the rules allow, or drafting requests so broad they invite a motion to quash on undue-burden grounds.
For received productions, the working questions are completeness questions. Did the custodian certify the records? Do the date ranges match what was demanded? In medical-records practice especially, a clinic’s “complete chart” routinely omits imaging, billing, and communications — each a follow-up subpoena waiting to be sent.
In the fact record
Third-party productions are where case files balloon. FactMarshal ingests each production as it arrives, classifies what’s inside, and — because the coverage view tracks what a matter like this should contain — shows which custodians and record types are still outstanding while there’s time to compel them.