Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-27-2020

Abstract

This blog post provides an overview of the book, Litigation Interest and Risk Assessment: Help Your Clients Make Good Litigation Decisions, which I co-authored with Michaela Keet and Heather Heavin. The book describes how practitioners can (1) avoid common decision-making errors in litigation, (2) anticipate likely court outcomes, (3) communicate with clients about what’s most important to them, (4) help them make better decisions, (5) negotiate and mediate more effectively, and (6) learn about technological tools to help make decisions in litigation.

Instead of focusing only on the value of the best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA), the book recommends that parties focus on their bottom lines. Bottom lines are calculated by deducting the future tangible and intangible costs of continued litigation from the expected BATNA value, as described in Section 2.A. Practitioners and parties often ignore or discount the parties’ intangible costs of disputing. The book includes detailed chapters identifying intangible costs of individuals and organizations and it provides methods for assigning values to them. It also includes detailed appendixes with useful checklists.

Download

Share

COinS