What’s Your Case Really Worth?

In this video, partner Keith A. Davidson discusses why lawyers and their clients don't always see eye-to-eye on the value of their Trust or Will lawsuit.

The following is a transcript of this video:

In this video, I want to discuss why do you think your case is more valuable than your lawyer thinks. So there’s a disconnect between lawyers and clients a lot of times on what a case is worth. How valuable is this case? How likely are you to succeed?

And the reason why there’s a disconnect in a lot of cases, at least in my opinion, is that a lot of times people don’t understand the road blocks that lie in front of them in terms of trying to winning your case.

So if you have a trust or will contest case, for example, only 30% of those cases are going to prevail of the ones that go to trial. That means you have a 70% chance of losing, no matter how good your case is. And that’s because it’s hard to overturn a trust or will. You, as the contesting party, have the burden of proof. You have to bring in the evidence. And if you don’t persuade a judge that you’re right with admissible evidence, you lose. That’s the default. And, for that reason, you have to look at a case and you have to think, well, how much would you get if you were successful at trial and then you have to discount that based on how good is the evidence and how hard is it going to be to try and prevail. So some cases are going to better than others. Some cases might have a 30% of prevailing whereas maybe another case has a 70% chance of prevailing. No case is going to have a 100% chance of prevailing.

Almost every case, 99.9% of cases will most certainly have some risk of loss associated to them. You just can’t guarantee that you’re going to win when you case your case to trial in front of a judge. No matter what you think, there’s always a risk of loss. And that’s really what you’re doing if you’re settling your case at time of mediation, is you’re trying to figure out, well, what is my risk of loss here and how much should I discount this case to take that risk of loss into account.

So, for example, let’s say you’re entitled to a million dollars if you win at trial. That’s the best you’re ever going to do. But, your case only has a 50% chance of winning come time of trial. That means your case is roughly worth about $500,000.00. It’s worth about half of the million because there’s a large risk of loss. And when you go to trial, it’s winner take all. So, if you win, you’ll get a million. If you lose, you’re going to get zero. And so now you’re at a settlement and you’re thinking, well, would I rather risk getting nothing going to trial and risk losing where I get zero, or would I rather take $500,000.00 and be done with this process and have the $500,000.00 in my pocket.

The problem is is that, I think as a client, you haven’t been through that process and so, in your mind, you might think that your case is the worst example of financial elder abuse ever known to the court system. It’s not. I promise you it’s not. No matter how bad your case is, when you go in front of a judge, they’ve seen a thousand cases just like yours and then they’ve seen another thousand that are far worse than yours. There’s a lot of scary things that go on out there. And, unfortunately, judges see the worst of the worst of the worst. So your case is not going to be the worst this judge has ever seen. And so you have to kind of take that into account.

Now, this is where trusts become so important. Because you and your lawyer have to trust each other. You have to have some basis to have mutual respect and trust because you’re relying on your lawyer to give you a reasonable assessment of your case. And so if a lawyer says, well, I think your case has a 60% chance of success, you need to know that that’s an honest assessment based on that lawyer’s years of experience and knowledge.
If you feel like the lawyer is just trying to get rid of you or get rid of your case and lowballing it, you’re never going to accept the number. And so you really have to find a lawyer that you trust, that you feel comfortable with. The bottom line here is the reason why cases seem more valuable to clients than the lawyers a lot of times, is because the lawyers have done your exact case many many times. And so we know pretty well how it’s going to turn out.
Have a discussion with your lawyer. Make sure that you understand what they’re telling you. Make sure that you understand and you feel comfortable that the lawyer’s giving you their honest opinion and then, ultimately, you’re going to have to decide if you’re going to trust that lawyer or if you’re going to not trust that lawyer. Although, I’ll tell you, if you’re at a spot where you don’t trust your lawyer any longer, you really should find a new lawyer.