Drafting interrogatories well starts with knowing what you need to prove, then writing narrow, single-topic questions that force the other side to commit to specific facts under oath. Under Federal Rule 33, each party is limited to 25 interrogatories including discrete subparts, so every question has to earn its place.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 33 – Interrogatories to Parties The goal is answers you can actually use, not evasive responses that eat your quota and give you nothing.
One boundary before anything else: interrogatories can only be served on parties to the lawsuit.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 33 – Interrogatories to Parties Non-party witnesses require a subpoena or deposition, not an interrogatory. If the party is a corporation, any officer or agent with access to the information can answer for it.
Start With What You Have to Prove
Before you draft a single question, pull the complaint or answer and list every element of every claim or defense. Breach of contract, for instance, requires proof that a contract existed, what its terms were, that the other side failed to perform, and that the failure caused harm. Each element points to at least one question.
Then separate what you already know from what only the opposing party controls. Federal Rule 26 already requires initial disclosures without any request: names of people with relevant information, supporting documents, a damages computation, and any applicable insurance agreements.2Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 26 – Duty to Disclose; General Provisions Governing Discovery Don’t spend a question on something you’ll get anyway. Spend them on gaps: information only the other side possesses, their version of key events, and the factual foundation for their legal positions.
Work Within the 25-Question Cap
Rule 33 caps interrogatories at 25 per party including discrete subparts, unless the parties stipulate to more or the court grants leave. What counts as a “discrete subpart” is where drafters get tripped up. The advisory committee’s guidance: you can’t dodge the limit by bundling unrelated subjects under one number, but a question asking about a particular communication that also asks the time, place, participants, and content counts as one interrogatory because those details all relate to the same subject.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 33 – Interrogatories to Parties
The working test: if a sub-question could stand on its own as a separate interrogatory about a different topic, it’s discrete and counts. If it just asks for more detail about the same event, most courts treat it as part of a single question. Expect aggressive counsel to argue every lettered sub-question is separate, so organize with that fight in mind. State rules often set their own limits, commonly between 30 and 40, and local rules control there.
The Format the Document Needs
Every set opens with a case caption showing the court, the parties, and the case number. Directly below, add a title identifying the document, such as “Plaintiff’s First Set of Interrogatories to Defendant.”
Before the numbered questions, include two setup sections. The instructions section states the ground rules, including that answers must draw on all information available to the responding party, not just personal knowledge. The definitions section pins down key terms. A good definition of “identify,” for example, forces the responding party to give a full name, last known address, phone number, and relationship to the case, so they can’t get away with a bare first name.
The document closes with a signature block signed by the attorney, or by the party if self-represented. Check your court’s local rules on margins, font, and spacing before filing anything.
Write One Question at a Time
The most common drafting mistake is the compound question. “Describe the events of the collision and explain why you failed to brake in time” lets the responding party answer whichever half is easier and ignore the rest. Split it. One topic, one category of information, one number.
Identification Questions
These ask the other side to name specific people, documents, or communications: “Identify every person who was present at the intersection of Main Street and Oak Avenue at the time of the collision on March 15, 2025.” The power of the question depends on how you defined “identify.” Get the definition right and you get full contact information and a description of what each person knows.
Contention Interrogatories
Federal rules explicitly allow interrogatories asking for opinions or positions on how the law applies to the facts.3United States Court of International Trade. Rule 33 – Interrogatories to Parties Example: “State all facts that support your contention that the plaintiff was comparatively at fault for the accident.” This locks the other side into the factual basis for their legal position under oath, which pays off at summary judgment and on cross-examination. Courts can defer contention interrogatories until later in discovery, so send them early and expect the answers may not come right away.
Damages Questions
If the other side is claiming damages, ask them to itemize every category of loss and the dollar amount for each. Then ask them to identify every document that supports each calculation. This freezes their numbers early and exposes soft spots in the damage theory before trial.
Draft to Survive the Predictable Objections
Rule 33 requires objections to be stated with specificity, and any ground not raised in a timely objection is waived unless the court excuses the failure for good cause.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 33 – Interrogatories to Parties That protects you from stale objections, but it also means sloppy questions invite legitimate ones. Write around the common categories:
- Vague or overbroad. “Describe all communications related to the project” is an open invitation. Narrow the timeframe, the people, and the subject. “Identify all written communications between you and Jane Smith between January 1, 2025, and March 31, 2025, concerning the delivery schedule for the Widget contract” is far harder to dodge.
- Unduly burdensome. If answering requires review of tens of thousands of documents for a marginal payoff, expect this objection. Keep the burden proportional to what’s at stake.
- Attorney-client privilege or work product. Don’t ask for communications between the other side and their lawyer, or for the lawyer’s analysis. You won’t get it and you’ll waste a question.
- Calls for speculation. Don’t ask the responding party to guess at someone else’s state of mind or predict future events. Stick to facts they know or can reasonably ascertain.
- Equally available information. Public records and anything equally accessible to both sides invite this objection. Save your questions for information only the other party has.
Anticipate a Business-Records Response
Instead of writing a narrative answer, the responding party may point you to a stack of documents. Rule 33(d) allows this, but only if the answer could be derived from those records with roughly the same effort it would take them, and only if they identify the specific records in enough detail for you to locate and review them, and give you a reasonable opportunity to examine them.4United States Courts. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
This gets abused. Parties sometimes dump thousands of unorganized pages and claim the answer is in there. That isn’t what the rule allows. If they could pull the answer easily from their own files but you’d need weeks to reconstruct it, the burden isn’t “substantially the same” and the response can be challenged. Rule 33(d) also doesn’t work for contention interrogatories or questions requiring subjective interpretation, because no document production can substitute for stating the facts that support a legal position. Frame contention questions so the business-records escape hatch isn’t available.
Serving the Interrogatories
Under federal rules, you can’t serve interrogatories until after the parties hold their Rule 26(f) discovery planning conference, unless the court orders otherwise or the parties agree.2Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 26 – Duty to Disclose; General Provisions Governing Discovery Once that conference happens, serve any time.
Service goes to the opposing party’s attorney, not directly to the party, using any method allowed under Rule 5. The usual methods are hand delivery, mail to the attorney’s last known address, or the court’s electronic filing system. E-filing logs the transmission and doesn’t require a separate certificate of service; any other method does.5Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 5 – Serving and Filing Pleadings and Other Papers
Deadlines and the Duty to Supplement
Service starts a 30-day clock for the responding party to serve answers and objections.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 33 – Interrogatories to Parties Parties can agree to a different deadline, and the court can shorten or extend it. Extensions are common early on.
The responding party’s obligations don’t end when the answers go out. Under Rule 26(e), a party must supplement or correct interrogatory answers on learning that a response was incomplete or incorrect in a material way, and that duty runs through trial.2Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 26 – Duty to Disclose; General Provisions Governing Discovery Failing to supplement can lead the court to exclude the undisclosed information entirely.
When Answers Don’t Come or Are Evasive
If the opposing party ignores the interrogatories, answers evasively, or objects to everything without justification, the remedy is a motion to compel under Rule 37. Before filing, you must certify a good-faith effort to resolve the dispute without court involvement.6Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 37 – Failure to Make Disclosures or to Cooperate in Discovery; Sanctions That usually means a meet-and-confer letter or call spelling out exactly what’s deficient and giving the other side a real chance to fix it. Filing without conferring is a quick way to lose credibility with the judge.
An evasive or incomplete answer is treated the same as a total failure to respond. If the court grants the motion and the other side still doesn’t comply, sanctions escalate: the court can deem matters established in your favor, exclude evidence, strike pleadings, enter default judgment or dismissal, or treat the failure as contempt. The court must also order the disobedient party or their attorney to pay the reasonable expenses, including attorneys’ fees, caused by the failure, unless the failure was substantially justified.6Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 37 – Failure to Make Disclosures or to Cooperate in Discovery; Sanctions
Precision at the drafting stage is what makes all of this work. A vague question produces a vague answer with room to maneuver later. A tight, specific question, tied to an element you have to prove and supported by a solid definition of the key terms, locks the other side into a position they’ll have to live with.