Introduction
Voltaire once said about the legal system, "I was never
ruined but twice: once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I won
one".
There can be little doubt that the cost and delay of litigation
has caused more than one winning litigant to feel it to have been a
pyrrhic endeavour once the final recovery and the costs are
measured. This, of course, says nothing for the loser. Although
litigants often do not understand the costs inherent even in a
legal victory, lawyers from the outset are required to handicap
their clients cases by assessing risks and costs within an
adversarial justice system that has been designed to balance the
due process rights of both plaintiffs and defendants. Ultimately
the paradigm litigation analysis requires a lawyer to chart a route
that optimizes recovery as economically as possible, while taking
into account the likelihood and quantum of recovery for a client,
both on the merits and in terms of collectability. This is not
