TN a recent, quite interesting article, forcefully presented and thorloughly researched, Professor Elizabeth Thornburg argues for the elimination of the work product doctrine. 1 She takes as her main target the conventional defenses of work product, but brings within the ambit of her discussion the positive economic perspective recently brought to work product.2 Her argument is clear, persuasive, and innovative. Of the many interesting points she makes, I was particularly informed by her discussion of the differential effect that confidentiality rules may have over different kinds of litigants.3 Indeed, in only one narrow respect was I not persuaded by her argument, and that concerns her assertion that the arguments she marshals against the conventional defense of work product apply equally well to its economic justification. Here I fear she fails to account adequately for the marginal nature of economic reasoning. Analogously, in her one argument specifically in response to the economic perspective, she fails to distinguish adequately ex post from ex ante analysis. Both points essentially vitiate her criticisms of the economic argument, although perhaps her criticisms survive as directed to the conventional argument. She must, then, reconstitute her arguments against work product to dispose of the economic justification for the doctrine. Perhaps she can do so. That effort will be assisted by a clear understanding of the difference between the conventional and the economic justification for the work product doctrine. Accordingly, I briefly elaborate here why her arguments against the conventional view of