DAY ONE: THE FUNDAMENTALS

Each session will consist of lecture,
followed by hands-on workshop and then group discussion.

Introduction

What is Litigation Risk Analysis^TM and why is it necessary? Participate in group demonstrations of why the approach currently used by most attorneys to value lawsuits can produce bad results.

 

Capturing the Key Uncertainties in Your Case

How do you sort out all issues -- pretrial and trial, legal and factual, liability and damages, judge and jury? Learn about dependency diagrams to better identify the key issues in a lawsuit, their interrelationships and their consequences; then learn how to convert them to decision trees to facilitate a better quantitative valuation of the suit.

 

Quantifying Your Subjective Opinions

What hidden "anchors" can distort every lawyer's judgment? Learn how to assess more realistic probabilities of success in front of judge or jury and more realistic verdict ranges.

 

Solving for the Value of Your Case

How should you combine your various assessments on all the liability and damages issues to arrive at a fair settlement value for your case? We will discuss the underlying arithmetic concepts, see how to calculate the expected value and generate a bar chart. We will also discuss the impact of litigation costs and the client's willingness to take risk on your settlement strategy.

 

Refining Your Pretrial and Trial Strategy

If your case is not about to settle, what would be the most cost-effective way to spend your time and money? See how sensitivity analyses are performed and how they provide a rational "cost-benefit" approach for deciding where to allocate your pretrial dollars and which trial strategies to pursue.

 

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DAY TWO: USING THE SOFTWARE

PREREQUISITES:
(1) An understanding of the material covered on Day One.
(2) A copy of TreeAge Pro on a laptop.

Building a Dependency/Influence Diagram

... that captures the issues, their interrelationships and their consequences.

 

Building a Decision Tree

... that captures the substance of your dependency/influence diagram -- and is technically sound.

 

Assessing Realistic Probabilities and Verdict Ranges

... using node comments (i.e., lists of reasons) and the probability wheel.

 

Creating and Defining Verdict Variables and Formulas

... permitting TreeAge Pro to calculate for you the total verdict for every scenario.

 

Generating the Expected Value and the Litigation Bar Chart

... showing the full range of potential outcomes and their corresponding probabilities of occurring, as well as the mean value of the distribution.

 

Creating Probability Variables and Generating Sensitivity Analysis Graphs

... allowing you to see the impact on case value of improving your probabilities of good results on the various issues.

 

Working with Clones

... so large trees can be constructed, solved, and modified more rapidly.