Page 18 - Delaware Lawyer - Fall 2022

FEATURE
Help Themselves
The Honorable
Paul A. Fioravanti, Jr.1
Helping Practitioners
A 10-year review of
Delaware Court of
Chancery guidelines
In January 2012, the Court of Chancery published its “Guidelines to Help Lawyers Practicing in the Court of Chancery” (the “Guidelines”).2 The Guidelines were promoted as best practices designed to assist litigants appearing in the Court of Chancery.
Since their initial publication, the Guidelines have undergone two re- visions, most recently in 2021. On
this 10th anniversary of the Guidelines, this article reflects on the history and purpose of the Guidelines, and offers practitioners tips that reinforce or oth- erwise extend beyond the Guidelines.
Memorializing the Unwritten Rules
Over the course of its 230-year history, the Court was known for having “long fol- lowed unwritten practices that knowledge- able attorneys follow.”3 The 1998 publica- tion of Don Wolfe and Mike Pittenger’s highly respected treatise Corporate and Commercial Practice in the Delaware Court of Chancery demystified many of the intricacies of Chancery practice, and it remains a go-to resource for any attorney appearing in the Court of Chancery.4
There were still some shared under- standings, however, that remained un-
written. Shortly after joining the court in 2009, Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster be- gan to share in his written opinions some of the institutional knowledge he had ac- quired as a regular Chancery practitioner.5 As he put it, “I thought it was important to level set. The repeat players knew the informal rules and expectations, but oth- ers were less familiar. I also wanted to give Delaware counsel tools to use in discus- sions with forwarding counsel about what should and shouldn’t be done.”
Those initiatives sparked internal dis- cussions about whether to develop cham- bers-specific practice preferences, along the lines of the Federal District Court and some courts in other jurisdictions, or a single set of court-wide guidelines. Under the leadership of then-Chancellor Leo E. Strine, Jr., the court chose the latter ap- proach. As Vice Chancellor Laster recalled, “Chancellor Strine was very supportive of the goal of having a shared base of knowl-
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