New Study: Settlements Beat Trials
A new study indicates that all parties to a lawsuit may be better off settling rather than going to trial.
Litigation consultants DecisionSet studied civil trial verdicts over a forty-year period and reached some interesting conclusions. The highlights:
- approximately 90% of all cases settle
- plaintiffs made the wrong decision in 61% of cases by going to trial
- defendants made the wrong decision in 24% of cases by going to trial
- getting it wrong cost plaintiffs an average of $43,000
- getting it wrong cost defendants an average of $1.1 million
So, who’s to blame for all these bad decisions? According to Randall Kiser, co-author of the study, the answer may be litigation lawyers. ”It’s entirely possible that attorneys are not giving adequate advice,” he says.
As evidence, Kiser pointed to a “troubling finding” that bad decisions to go to trial have actually become more frequent over the years. “It’s peculiar if any field is not improving its performance over a 40-year period,” he said.
In its analysis of the study, the New York Times noted that “[c]ritics of the profession have long argued that lawyers have an incentive to try to collect fees that are contingent on winning in court or simply to bill for all the hours required to prepare and go to trial.” It also pointed out that law schools don’t teach lawyers how to handicap the odds of winning a trial.
Lawyers have been quick to criticize the study, which actually hasn’t been released yet. “Most clients think they are completely right,” Michael Shepard of the law firm Heller Ehrman told the Times. “A good lawyer has to be able to tell clients that a judge or jury might see them differently.”
The Lesson
Whether it’s lawyers or clients who are more at fault, we suggest taking matters into your own hands by doing an early case evaluation of all lawsuits to determine the merits of settlement versus trial. Click here for handy tips on that and other ways to make litigation less painful.
