To respond to a subpoena duces tecum, preserve every document that could be responsive the moment you receive it, then before the compliance deadline either produce the requested materials, serve written objections, or file a motion to quash. In federal court under Rule 45, that deadline is the earlier of the date set in the subpoena or 14 days after it was served on you.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena Doing nothing is the only response with no upside: it exposes you to contempt without resolving anything.
Read the Subpoena and Clock the Deadline
Open it the day it arrives. Find the issuing court, the case name and number, and the attorney who signed it. Any objection, motion, or response you file later has to go to the right court and the right people, so get those details down first.
Then find two things on the face of the document: the compliance date and the list of items demanded. Under Rule 45, written objections must be served before the earlier of the compliance date or 14 days after you were served.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena If the window is short, start gathering documents and evaluating objections at the same time rather than one after the other.
Check the production location too. Rule 45 caps the place of production at 100 miles from where you live, work, or regularly do business, and a subpoena that exceeds that limit must be quashed.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena That geographic defect alone can be enough to defeat the whole subpoena.
Preserve Everything Before You Decide Anything
Your duty to preserve starts the instant the subpoena lands, before you’ve decided whether you’ll fight it. Do not delete, shred, alter, or hide anything that might be responsive. Turn off auto-delete on email and messaging accounts. Tell anyone in your organization who might hold responsive materials to hold onto them.
Destroying or concealing documents tied to a legal proceeding is a federal crime. Under 18 U.S.C. ยง 1512, anyone who corruptly alters, destroys, or conceals a record with intent to make it unavailable for an official proceeding faces up to 20 years in prison.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 1512 – Tampering With a Witness, Victim, or an Informant Those penalties apply even if you had a perfectly valid objection to the subpoena itself. Preserve first. Object second.
Pick Your Path: Comply, Object, or Quash
You have three real options, and you can mix them.
Comply, in Whole or in Part
If you’re producing documents, gather what’s responsive and organize it so each page carries a unique identifier (Bates numbering is the standard). Write a cover letter that lists what you’re providing, grouped to match the subpoena’s categories. If you’re producing some items and withholding others, say so clearly in the letter and state the grounds for each withheld category.
Serve Written Objections
A written objection is served on the attorney who issued the subpoena, before the earlier of the compliance date or 14 days after service. It names the case, the court, and each objection with its legal basis. The payoff: once you’ve served objections, the burden shifts. The issuing party now has to go to court and win a motion to compel before you have to turn anything over.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena
Move to Quash
A motion to quash is filed with the court in the district where compliance is required, asking the judge to cancel or modify the subpoena.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena Use this when the subpoena has a fundamental defect: it demands privileged material with no exception, it reaches beyond the 100-mile limit, or it imposes a genuinely undue burden. Serve the motion on all parties in the case. Mailing an objection letter to the issuing attorney is not the same thing as filing with the court, and the two mechanisms are not interchangeable.
Grounds That Actually Work
You are not obligated to hand over everything a subpoena lists. Rule 45 directs courts to quash or modify a subpoena on several grounds.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena
Privilege is the strongest. Confidential communications with your attorney, your doctor, or your spouse are typically shielded, and if no waiver or exception applies, the court must quash that part of the request. Undue burden is next: when the cost and effort of production is wildly out of proportion to the case, courts will narrow or quash. A demand for ten years of archived email in a small contract dispute is the classic example. Overbreadth covers subpoenas written as fishing expeditions, with no reasonable specificity about what’s actually wanted. Irrelevance applies when the documents have no connection to the legal issues (personal financial records in a workplace safety dispute, for instance). Insufficient time is grounds on its own: a subpoena served Monday that demands production Wednesday fails to allow a reasonable time to comply. And trade secrets or confidential commercial information can be withheld or produced only under a protective order limiting who sees them.
These grounds aren’t exclusive. One subpoena can be partly privileged, partly overbroad, and partly burdensome. Address each category separately when you draft your response.
Call the Issuing Attorney First
Before paying for a motion to quash, pick up the phone. A short conversation with the attorney who issued the subpoena often produces a narrower request, a longer deadline, or an agreed-upon production format without the court getting involved. Judges generally expect the parties to try this before bringing a dispute to them.
If you can tell what the other side actually needs, propose a targeted production. Get any agreement on narrowed scope or cost allocation in writing. An email exchange confirming the revised terms is usually enough.
Produce Documents the Right Way
Three technical pieces trip people up when they move from gathering documents to actually sending them out.
Format for electronic files. Most subpoenas today sweep in email, spreadsheets, databases, texts, and cloud files. If the subpoena specifies a production format, comply with it or object to it in writing. If it’s silent, you can produce in the form you ordinarily maintain the files or in another reasonably usable form.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena Native files preserve metadata like creation and edit history, which is often what the requesting party actually wants; if that metadata is sensitive or beside the point, object and propose an alternative. Settle format questions early, because producing in a form the other side can’t use just generates more disputes.
Redactions. Before producing documents that will end up filed with a federal court, strip out the personal identifiers covered by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.2. The rule allows only the last four digits of Social Security and taxpayer ID numbers, the year of a date of birth, the initials of a minor, and the last four digits of a financial account number.3Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 5.2 – Privacy Protection for Filings Made With the Court Redacting those identifiers is a sensible precaution even when documents go directly to opposing counsel rather than into a court filing.
Privilege log. This is where most people slip. If you withhold any document on privilege or work-product grounds, Rule 45 requires you to expressly state the claim and describe each withheld document in enough detail that the other side can test whether the privilege really applies, without exposing the privileged content.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena In practice that means a privilege log: a list identifying each withheld document by date, author, recipients, general subject, and the specific privilege claimed. A vague log that says “attorney-client privilege” for 200 documents with no further detail invites a challenge. A thin or missing log can lead a court to find the privilege waived entirely.
Costs When You’re a Non-Party
If you have no stake in the lawsuit itself, you have some protection against swallowing heavy production costs. Rule 45 provides that any order compelling a non-party to produce documents must protect that person from significant expense.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena Courts can shift some or all of the cost to the party that issued the subpoena.
Judges look at whether you have a stake in the outcome, how invasive the request is, how much work it takes to separate responsive material from privileged or irrelevant material, and whether the costs are reasonable. The practical move is to negotiate cost allocation with the issuing party before you start the production work. An agreement in advance is far easier to enforce than reimbursement after the money is already spent.
What Happens If You Ignore It
Silence is not a response. The right way to resist a bad subpoena is a written objection or a motion to quash, filed on time. Under Rule 45(g), a court can hold in contempt anyone who fails without adequate excuse to obey a subpoena.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena
Federal courts have broad power to punish contempt by fine, imprisonment, or both.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 401 – Power of Court A contempt order can also require you to pay the fees the other side spent enforcing the subpoena. Rule 45 cuts the other way too: a party who issues an abusive subpoena faces sanctions including reasonable attorney’s fees.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena Even if your plan is to fight, put your objections in writing and serve them before the deadline.