Start from the End

Start from the End

In legal work, it is easy to begin by asking:

What claim can we bring?

But the more important question is often:

What do we want to achieve in the end?

The goal may be to collect an amount, stop harm, protect a contractual position, or end a relationship with the least possible loss. Each outcome has a different path.

Sometimes you have a strong basis for a claim, but the claim does not achieve the desired interest quickly enough. Sometimes a settlement may appear less powerful than a judgment, but it gives the client what they actually need.

That is why legal strategy does not begin by choosing the procedure, but by defining the outcome.

Only then comes the question:

What is the shortest and safest legal path to reach it?

A matter is not managed only from the first document in it...

It is managed from the picture we want it to have at the end.

— Omar Al-Baghdadi