Step three in how to win a lawsuit: Define what you mean by "win"

This is not a silly question. If you have nothing more than a very vague idea about what you should expect to happen with your case, you have no way to know whether you’ve won or lost, no way to make an intelligent decision about whether to settle and for how much, and no way to know whether it’s worth the gamble of taking your case to a trial in front of a jury. What is your case worth? What is the best way to bring the case to a satisfactory resolution as quickly as possible and with as few legal expenses as possible? It’s your case, not your lawyer’s case, and you need to take control of it, participate in all the important decisions about the case, participate in all decisions about the costs that will be incurred in presenting your case, and participate in all discussions about the strategy and tactics that will be used and why. The last thing to do is to trust that your lawyer will just take care of everything for you.

If you want to see what happens when clients leave everything to their lawyers and do not participate in decisions affecting their cases, try reading my novel, The Litigators, available through my publisher, Scarletta Press, or Amazon (both in paperback and digital copies). Suffice it to say that lawyers have a very different definition of what it means to win a case than clients do. If you ask a lawyer to define a “win” you are likely to hear about some grand courtroom victory. If you ask clients to define what they consider to be a “win” you will almost never hear anything about a courtroom. Lawyers are trained in the art of courtroom battles, all the rules, procedures, tactical maneuvering, and precedents they need to win their cases in court. Lawyers astonishingly have virtually no training in law school about the art of resolving disputes amicably and fairly.

Most clients do not want a result that is unfair to the other side (and if they do, most good lawyers will not take their cases); they just want a result that is fair to them. So what is fair? You need to know this. You need to discuss this in detail with your lawyer, at the outset before any lawsuit is filed, several times during the pendency of your case and before you actually start trial.

In my experience, the only cases that are tried are the cases where lawyers have not fairly evaluated their cases. Where both attorneys and clients are reasonable, cases almost always settle. So make your lawyers tell you how they intend to get your case settled and what they can do to get it settled quickly. And don’t let them convince you that they have to do a lot of work first; this is pure baloney. Any case can be settled before a lawsuit is filed if everyone involved treats each other reasonably, civilly and respectfully, if each side is willing to listen to the other side, really listen, that is, and try to understand the other side’s perspectives. If your lawyer does not agree with this approach, I’d say you need a new lawyer. This approach works, it saves enormous money otherwise wasted on a big legal battle and it saves all the stress that invariably takes its toll on anyone who takes a case through the legal system.

Join me next week for Step four in how to win a lawsuit: Get the case settled