A protective order governs the treatment of confidential material exchanged in discovery. Without one, a party asked to produce pricing, customer lists or source code has every reason to fight rather than produce.
Tiers. Most orders use two or three: Confidential, for material limited to the litigation team and the parties’ need-to-know personnel; Attorneys’ Eyes Only, for competitively sensitive material withheld from the client’s business staff; and sometimes a source-code tier with inspection conditions.
Designation discipline. Over-designation is the standard abuse and courts increasingly police it. A challenge procedure — written notice, meet and confer, then motion with the burden on the designating party — belongs in every order.
Filing under seal is separate. A protective order governs the parties; sealing a court record requires a showing that overcomes the public right of access, judged document by document. Parties are regularly surprised that material designated confidential must nonetheless be filed publicly.
Return or destruction at the end of the case, with a carve-out permitting counsel to retain a litigation file, is standard and should be specified rather than assumed.
Third parties. Non-parties compelled to produce should be given the protection of the order expressly, or they will move to quash instead.