This paper develops a model of civil discovery as strategic search. Plaintiff and defendant choose discovery intensities that determine the stochastic arrival of favorable evidence over a finite discovery period. Search improves a party’s expected litigation position but also imposes burdens on the opposing side. The model provides a framework for analyzing how civil-procedure rules affect equilibrium discovery behavior and cost. Numerical caps, scheduling orders, cost-shifting, sanctions, and proportionality operate through different channels and are not economically interchangeable. A central implication is that shortening discovery does not necessarily reduce litigation costs, because parties may respond by intensifying search over the remaining interval.