Litigation Interest and Risk Assessment: Help Your Clients Make Good Litigation Decisions

Abstract

This is the introduction to a new book, Litigation Interest and Risk Assessment: Help Your Clients Make Good Litigation Decisions. This book describes how lawyers, mediators, and settlement conference judges can help parties use litigation interest and risk assessment (LIRAs) to make good decisions in litigation. Although parties may receive significant benefits from litigation, they generally also incur substantial risks and costs in the process. Predicting risks and costs is very difficult. This book provides thorough advice about how lawyers and mediators can work with their clients to develop realistic LIRAs and help them use these assessments in making decisions about litigation, negotiation, and mediation. The book sets out the ethical rules requiring lawyers to help clients make informed decisions and requiring mediators to refrain from coercive techniques. It draws on behavioral psychology literature to explain why lawyers and clients often make decision errors in litigation – and how to reduce those errors. It then provides detailed descriptions of how to value both tangible costs and intangible costs that individual and organizational parties often incur in litigation. It provides a simple framework for conducting a LIRA process as well as introduces the reader to more sophisticated tools for estimating court outcomes. It also provides advice and practical checklists that readers of all philosophies of lawyering, negotiation, and mediation can use in their professional practice.

Keywords: litigation, risk, interests, negotiation, mediation, ethics, litigation expenses, intangible costs