“We’ve got a really good chance of winning the lawsuit,” the lawyer tells his in-house lawyer-client. Asked by the CEO to put a number on what that means, the inside lawyer reports an 8 in 10 chance of winning. Great, except that the outside lawyer meant a 4 in 10 chance of winning. Significant? You bet, especially when making decisions to settle and at what price.
How unrealistic is this scenario? Several years ago, I attended a seminar about using decision-trees to improve valuation of cases. Marc Victor asked the audience to write down in numerical form what various “lawyerisms” meant. “Good chance” produced a range of from 40 to 80 percent. Other non-numerical assessment terms produced similar ranges.
What’s the moral of this anecdote? You owe it to your client to communicate precisely what you mean in a manner that allows your client to understand precisely what you are saying. It does neither of you any good to have such gaps in understanding. Speaking precisely avoids the trap of using “wiggle-words” to give yourself an “out” later if things don’t work out as you suggest. But remember that if you say you have a 70 percent chance of winning, that still means you expect to lose 3 of every 10 times. Indeed, as a proponent that visual communication is a superior form of communication for most people, try using a wheel that illustrate by color contrast what 70 percent means. But however you accomplish it, don’t let your client be thinking 80 percent when you mean 40.
Comments