Google logo at the company'soffice in Hamburg, Germany.

Last week, Google filed a petition in the Texas state court ofTravis County for a protective order against Texas Attorney GeneralKen Paxton, who is leading a multistate antitrust investigationagainst the company.

According the New York Times, the petition largely takes issue with thesafeguards put in place around how Google's sensitivebusiness documents—including whitepapers and internalplanning memos—would be shared with outside consultants onthe investigation.

The company reportedly asked to be notified in advance beforethe attorney general's office shared its confidential documentswith third parties. It also called for a "cooling-off" period thatwould keep those consultants from transitioning immediately to anew job with one of Google's competitors.

So, will Google get everything on its list? While protectiveorders in and of themselves aren't entirely out of the ordinary,the cooling-off period may be a tough sell given both the unusualnature of the request and the logistic difficulties it could poseto utilizing consultants and their expertise .

"You are not normally worried about your other side's expertsstealing and monetizing the information that is provided to themfor the analysis," said Eric Mandel, a consultant with the ITservice management company Driven, Inc.

Complicating matters further is the résumé of the consultantsthat Paxton has lined up, one of which the Times identified as aformer lawyer for Microsoft with experience representing clients inother antitrust cases against Google. The other, meanwhile, haslogged time in the employ of a Russian search engine calledYandex.

For Google, the concern may be less about the past and moreabout what could happen if those consultants reengage those workingrelationships at some point in the future.

Joseph Tate, counsel and director of e-discovery and practiceadvisory services at Cozen O'Connor, said that while consultants inthese types of cases will likely never be able to get their handson documents that can be taken home, the sensitive information theyare privy to can become lodged in their minds.

He said similar concerns around the use ofconsultants often come up in the intellectual propertylitigation space, where those experts will often agree to aprosecution bar that would prevent them from taking informationgleaned from a case to file a competing patent.

As for whether or not a court would apply similarconsideration Google's request for a cooling-off period,that remains to be seen.

"I don't think its [an] overreach though, frankly. If I wassitting in Google's shoes I [would] want to protect thisinformation and they have every right to do so," Tate said.

However, that doesn't mean that getting there is a slamdunk. There may be other considerations that a court would have totake into account, even if it decided to consider acooling-off period.

Megan McKnight, an attorney and founder of Tealstone Law,alluded to the tension between the need to protectGoogle's trade secrets and allowing the prosecution to make use ofa consultant's expertise.

She pointed out there's no telling how long a case like this maylast, which when stacked on top of a potential cooling-off periodcould mean that consultants have to wait quitesome time before they are able to take their next gig.

"The consultants may decide not to continue without clarity onwhat the limitations are that will be imposed on them and how longthat is," McKnight said.

But even if Google's efforts to secure a cooling-off period areultimately unsuccessful, it may still accomplish its objective withregards to protecting its trade secrets given the public nature ofthe petition filed in Texas.

"Even if it's denied, everybody is on notice that Google is veryconcerned about this so that will help encourage people tomaintain strict compliance with the [protective] order that isultimately entered," McKnight said.