By making good decisions early about who to hire as your counsel and what your desired outcome should realistically be for your type of case, you can make your money go further for your case.

A "Chess, Not Checkers" concept emphasizes strategic, long-term thinking and planning over short-term gains and reactive decision-making.

Attorneys with higher rates are more likely to have transparency and a system that lets you smartly evaluate where to best put your money. They have reports and other data that lets them give you an estimate of attorney fees to anticipate for your type of case. In some cases, a lawyer whose rate is 3x or 4x that of their competitor may actually charge a lower total fee than the lower-priced attorney. Higher-priced, experienced lawyers are often more efficient and informative than lower-rate competitors, putting you in a better decision to make big-picture decisions and move your case along to resolution.

There may be strategic reasons about whether and when to issue written discovery requests or to send notice to the opposing party to appear and testify in a deposition. Each method has its strengths and weaknesses.

Our lawyers have advanced training for written discovery and depositions, including best practices training for depositions from the National Institute of Trial Advocacy. We have a complete library about depositions in all manner of civil cases, including helpful DVDs that we share with clients to help them prepare for their depositions.