Don’t Start With Your Answer… Start With Your Opponent’s Burden

Don’t Start With Your Answer… Start With Your Opponent’s Burden

When a claim reaches a lawyer, the first reaction is sometimes to look for defenses and responses.

Yet many cases are better understood by starting from the opposite direction.

We first ask:

What must the opposing party prove to obtain what they seek?

Have they established the source of the obligation?
Have they established the breach?
Have they established the damage?
And have they established that this damage was the direct result of that breach?

The defense then becomes calmer and more precise, because we are not chasing every statement in the claim; we are testing the structure on which the claim itself rests.

In many cases, the defense does not need to demolish everything the opposing party says.

It is enough to break one essential link in the chain of proof, and the part built upon it collapses.

A strong argument does not always begin with what we can say… but with what the other party must prove and has failed to prove.

— Omar Al-Baghdadi