Swiss civil procedure does not recognize broad pretrial discovery as practiced in common law jurisdictions. Instead, the Swiss Code of Civil Procedure (CPC) focuses on the court's powers to order the production of evidence whenever the parties plead relevant facts controversially and the parties' duty to cooperate in the taking of evidence by the court.

Each party must plead the facts and evidence necessary to support their claims or defenses. This is set forth in article 55(1) of the CPC, which states that each party must allege the facts it relies on and propose the corresponding evidence.

That said, there is no general obligation to disclose all relevant documents; however, under article 160 of the CPC, each party may request that the court order the other party or a third party to produce specific documents. The request must identify the document with sufficient precision, such that it can be easily identified, and demonstrate its relevance to the case. The court has broad discretion to deny the request if the document is not identified with precision, not deemed relevant, or if its production would violate legal privilege or confidentiality protections (e.g., business secret under article 162 of the Swiss Criminal Code ("CrimC") and attorney-client privilege under article 321 of the CrimC). In particular, fishing expeditions or overly broad requests are not permitted.