File this under “Yet another thing they don’t teach you in law school that could be central to the success of your legal career.”

Whether you’re building a plaintiff-side contingency fee practice or making investment decisions about which cases to fund at a litigation finance firm, figuring out how to value a potential piece of litigation is a vital first step.  Roman Silberfeld, the national trial chair of Robins Kaplan based in Los Angeles, and Allison Chock, director at litigation finance company Omni Bridgeway Management (USA), discussed their respective approaches to that process last week in conversation with Richard Jolly, a professor at Southwestern Law School and a fellow for the Civil Justice Research Initiative of UC Berkeley School of Law, which sponsored a webinar on the topic.