Three things. All three. Every time.

01  Clear Liability

We look for cases where liability is obvious — where the defendant plainly violated our client’s rights and no reasonable jury would seriously doubt it. The civil standard is only a preponderance of the evidence: more likely than not. We hold ourselves to a far higher bar. Before we invest our own time and money, we want to be convinced of liability to something approaching certainty. Cases that turn on close calls, competing inferences, or layered defenses are better suited to hourly representation, which we’re glad to provide.

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02  Substantial Damages — at least $5 million

Major business litigation is expensive and hard-fought. By the time a case resolves, we will often have invested what would have been one to two million dollars in fees at our standard hourly rates. On a 40% contingency, a case has to be worth at least $5 million for that investment to make sense. We take a contingency case to earn a multiple of our hourly rates — a return justified by the risk we accept. If the likely recovery is smaller, everyone is better served by hourly representation, where we would typically earn more in any event. We’re candid about that.

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03  A Collectible Defendant

A judgment is worth only what you can collect. Too often, the parties who violate others’ rights have little money, or sit beyond easy reach offshore. We will not spend years and substantial resources winning a judgment we cannot collect. We look for a well-capitalized defendant — a substantial company or individual with assets that can readily satisfy a large judgment. Our firm does not do collection work, and we do not take cases that would require it. The ideal defendant is one who pays because it knows that if it didn’t, its assets would be seized immediately.

Finding all three together is hard, which is why we decline roughly 95% of what we see. If your matter has all three, we want to hear about it.