Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell attend de Grisogono Sponsors The 2005 Wall Street Concert Series Benefitting Wall Street Rising, with a Performance by Rod Stewart at Cipriani Wall Street on March 15, 2005 in New York City.

Still-secret court filings related to sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged procurer Ghislaine Maxwell could implicate "hundreds of other people," Maxwell's lawyer said Wednesday during a hearing.

But finding out who they are will take some time.

Maxwell's lawyer and an attorney for women who claim Epstein, a financier, sexually abused them told U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska they have not agreed how the documents should be unsealed.

Preska was clearly irritated with their lack of progress on the documents, which are part of a defamation lawsuit that one of Epstein's accusers, Virginia Giuffre, filed several years ago against Maxwell, a British socialite.

The case files are known to contain claims by Giuffre that she was sexually abused by "numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister and other world leaders."

"Did you people not talk about this?" Preska asked the lawyers in federal court in Manhattan when she was told there was no plan in place for reviewing the documents.

Preska ended the hearing with a tentative plan to have the attorneys take the next two weeks to hash out a process for categorizing the thousands of pages of sealed documents.

After that, the lawyers would have a week to designate which group of documents should be unsealed first, with a rolling week-to-week process thereafter to evaluate the material and argue over how much or how little should be disclosed publicly.

There could be up to 10 categories for the documents.

Jeffrey Pagliuca, a lawyer for Maxwell, said the sealed documents include "literally hundreds of pages of investigative reports that mention hundreds of people."

"There are hundreds of other people who could be implicated" in the documents, Pagliuca said.

Pagliuca said he wanted a month or so to determine which documents go in which categories.

Preska rejected that idea.

"You know we got to get this done," the judge said.

The hearing came nearly a month after Epstein killed himself in jail while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges related to his alleged abused of dozens of underage girls from 2002 through 2005 at his luxurious properties in New York City and in Palm Beach, Florida.

The financier was a former friend of Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, and Britain's Prince Andrew. He had pleaded not guilty in the case, in which prosecutors had claimed his abuse was abetted by unidentified conspirators who helped provide him with a stream of young girls and women to satisfy his sexual obsessions.

Prosecutors have said they are continuing to investigate the case, leaving open the prospect that others could be criminally charged.