US Patent 7974850 Method of early case assessment in law suits

A tool which provides counsel with a data collection mechanism to guide them through various steps in the litigation process and directs counsel and/or legal assistants to determine what information is required. The tool provides a “Discovery Generator” that is available to capture counsel's potential discovery requests, which are linked to existing document and form production tools for facilitated production of discovery. The tool informs the user of the percentage of progress of the required information that has been entered. The tool provides an analytical framework that captures the judgment of seasoned practitioners to provide a comprehensive analysis of the legal, factual, and business aspects of the lawsuit. The tool provides methodologies that quantify subjective analyses through the use of weighted measuring schemes. The tool provides a decision tree structure underlying the various steps of the methodology activated by user's answers to queries to aid in the capture and analysis of information. To do this the tool directs counsel to assign values to reflect the importance of various aspects of the litigation. Based on the values that are assigned, counsel's assessment of the particular aspect of the litigation which is captured through the queries mentioned above, and statistical assessments of likely outcomes based on historical records of previously captured information and analogous assessments, the tool provides counsel with suggested paths forward. This process occurs on both a step by step basis as well as with an overall assessment of the case.