The Problem

Think about claims where you went to trial and got hit for a large verdict. Did you pass up a chance to settle for less because you (or your client) thought plaintiff’s demand was excessive? Now think about claims where you did settle. Might a fear of runaway juries have caused you (or your client) to pay too much?

Attorneys and claims managers have always had a difficult tightrope to walk: Overvalue cases by even a small percentage, and your client will pay out millions more than necessary in settlements across its entire portfolio. But undervalue cases, and the client can miss out on good settlements, see its pretrial and trial costs skyrocket and, for insurers, risk bad faith liability.

And the pressure has only been increasing: Today you are expected to handle claims at even lower costs, but without sacrificing quality. One way to accomplish that is to resolve claims earlier. But the benefits from early case disposition run smack into the problem that reliable evaluations are even trickier with less information. So walking the tightrope gets even harder!

Can you do a good job — especially early on — of assessing the defendant’s chances of liability and the jury’s award of damages?  Can you properly arrive at a maximum settlement value in cases with alternative theories of liability or defenses, uncertainty on both compensatory and punitive damages, and potential comparative fault of the plaintiff and/or codefendants?  Can you correctly account for your jurisdiction’s rules on joint and several liability and credits from settling parties?

And even when you are comfortable with your analysis, can you present recommendations in clear, unambiguous, quantitative terms, so the client will be confident that the most rational decisions are being made?

The Solution

Yes, you can — with Litigation Risk Analysis Software Models!

PROVEN — The Models are based on the principles of "decision tree analysis" — the very same discipline taught in business, engineering and medical schools for making better decisions in the face of significant uncertainty.  Marc B. Victor, Esq. — the developer of Litigation Risk Analysis — has been teaching these principles to attorneys and claims managers for over 30 years, and has captured them in these Models. Note that these Models do not replace your expertise and judgment with their own. Rather, they incorporate proven tools to help you make more realistic assessments of probabilities, shares of fault, and verdict ranges. They then apply the proper quantitative steps to correctly combine all of your assessments (and your choice of joint and several liability rules) to arrive at a defensible settlement value.

PRACTICAL — By offering libraries of decision trees for various types of claims, the Models remedy the most frequent drawback to the use of Litigation Risk Analysis — the time needed to construct correct trees. And all the computations are done in seconds, without room for error.

PERSUASIVE — The Models demonstrate to the client that each case has been rigorously evaluated. They document the rationale underlying your recommendations, and clearly show the effect of varying any assumptions. Thus the time needed to agree on settlement strategy is greatly reduced.

The Results

• Improved Chances of Winning due to greater rigor and discipline in the analysis of issues, evidence and arguments.

• Better Settlement Decisions by ensuring that case value properly reflects all relevant information and judgments.

• Efficient Case Management prior to trial or settlement.

• Quick Updating of case value and pretrial strategy as new information is learned.

• Businesslike Framework and Language for communicating with clients in terms they find useful for decision-making.