Litigation as War 1 - Thinking About Stategy

I think some people think of litigation as needing no strategy. I cannot explain why they think so. Maybe watching too much Judge Wapner and his successors. Those television shows have as much reality to litigation as Jerry Springer has to civilized discourse. Perhaps people just do not understand that mere bluster does make for a successful case any more than its for a successful war.

If you are a potential client, I will ask a lot of questions about where you want to go with a case and about the facts and how much you want to want to put into the case. These questions are to find out your goals and what we have to do to reach those goals and how much you money and effort you want to put into getting to your goals.

Several years ago I had a client get into a snit over that last question. We parted ways over that very question. In that matter, the company looked to get $24,000.00. That could easily be eaten up by attorney fees. I am not averse to clients who want to spend as much as they will get back in a judgment but I do think clients need informing of the costs of litigation. If the client wants to pay me more than they will get back from the case, that is their business. My business is informing my client so that they can make the decision of telling me to go after the other party.

If you are a potential client reading this, then should you not expect to be informed of the risks and benefits of a case? Expect a dialog with this office, please. I freely admit my thinking on litigation strategy came from reading Sun Tzu's Art of War several times over the past twenty some years. This passage from The 'Trial Warrior': Applying Sun Tzu's The Art of War to Trial Advocacy captures my own opinion quite well:

...Most trial lawyers will likely identify themselves as a combination of two or all three conceptual models offered; however, the term “Trial Warrior” has a degree of verisimilitude: for the “zealous advocate”, The Art of War provides a blueprint for developing and executing a comprehensive client-focused litigation strategy....

I also strongly urge reading Machiavelli’s The Prince Meets Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. It does a very good job of describing how the mindset for litigation parallels that for war.