Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

Some clients get it and others don't.  What is "it"?  "It" are the risks and benefits of going forward with a contested hearing.  Just this week, I was faced with two different clients who were facing a litigated hearing.  One decided to settle the matter without going to a hearing, and the other decided to go to a hearing.  What was the difference between them?  First, one of them was a client of the Trenches, and one was not.  That's important, because here in the Trenches we know that the most we promise our clients is that we will do our best for them, that we will present the facts and the law in the most favorable light to them.  What the court does with that is anybody's guess.  That little fact was driven home in a conversation we had yesterday with another attorney.  You see, we here in the Trenches won a very big relocation case about a month ago.  This other attorney was in the courtroom when the decision was announced.  He had a relocation case before the same judge the next week.  He was defending against the relocation, and had told his client that the other parent was probably not going to be able to relocate with the children.  He told me yesterday that he really rethought that advice and had to go back to his client and tell him that he might have been wrong.  That story is why we here in the Trenches never tell a client what the outcome will be if they go to court, because you never know.  What we can tell them is what we've seen, what the judges have historically done and how good we think their chances are of prevailing.  We also tell them what could happen if everything goes wrong.  How else can a client make an informed decision about what course to take?  Back to those two clients from this week.  The one who is not our client was told there is no way he'll lose in court, so he had nothing to gain from settling, except perhaps a better relationship with the other parent (which obviously wasn't that important a consideration).  Our client was told the pros and the cons.  She decided that even if she had to accept a little bit less than what she thought she'd get, she saved legal fees and avoided the very real potentiality of receiving less than half of the amount for which she settled.  She's happy because because she weighed everything against her tolerance for risk, her desire for a quick resolution and money in her pocket.  I hope that other client will be that happy after trial.  Just another day, here in the Trenches./