I recently found an excellent inhouse counsel perspective on why litigation risk analysis and decision trees are critical tools for litigators and lawyers working on settlements.
Settlement Perspectives is a blog by John DeGroote, Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer at BearingPoint, Inc. DeGroote has years of in-house experience. His post Why Should You Try a Decision Tree in Your Next Dispute? lays out how decision trees help inhouse counsel explain litigation and its risks to internal business clients. This is a must-read for inhouse litigators (especially those skeptical of learning decision trees).
Decision trees are one of many tools lawyers can use to improve how they practice. DeGroote has another post that relates to improving law practice with technology, Get to the Point, and Get It Across, with a Mediation Mind Map, which explains the value of Mind Maps for communicating.
Lest anyone get the wrong idea, however, this blog is, as its name suggests, about settlements. DeGrotte is a lawyer who understands how technology sharpens his practice. Here, software helps achieve better settlements.
Technology is now ubiquitous yet many lawyers have not incorporated highly useful applications into their practices. If law practice were agriculture and technology tools to work the land, many lawyers would still be using oxen and ploughs; only a few driving combines.
[And by the way, for any list keepers, this is another legal blog by inhouse counsel.]