Attorneys are often asked by their clients to assess a claim, provide a likelihood of success and assign a risk to the matter. The client may then take that assessment to determine how to proceed in the case (i.e., whether to settle or go to trial) or in valuing the case. Although such assessments are quite routine, they can create great risk because, as experienced attorneys know, the result in a case is rarely (if ever) guaranteed.

No matter how carefully the attorney considers the issues in providing an evaluation, there are times when the outcome or verdict will dramatically differ from the attorney’s valuation. In such cases, the clients (or their insurers) may blame the attorneys for not seeing it coming, especially when the client had the opportunity to settle the case prior to trial but failed to do so in reliance upon the attorney’s valuation. It may be that the attorney overlooked a critical legal factor or other detail that might have influenced the outcome; in other situations, the attorney can do everything right, but there can still be an unforeseen outcome.

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