fall 2004 vol. 10 no. 2                                                                                                                         Return to Contents
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Structured Case Analysis

Greg Krehel, CaseSoft

Introduction

Structured Case Analysis is a process we’ve developed for organizing, exploring, and evaluating the knowledge gathered as you work up of any piece of litigation. The following article explains the Structured Case Analysis process and the benefits you should receive from embracing this approach. I think you’ll find that the method is easy and the benefits are numerous and concrete. For example, an interesting and perhaps unexpected byproduct of employing Structured Case Analysis is that you’ll end up with a more satisfied, motivated, and trained staff. How? Read on.

Structured Case Analysis Requirements
Structured Case Analysis isn’t magic — it’s a method. Nothing complex or tricky, but a method nonetheless. Think Atkins Diet. If you want to lose weight by following the Atkins Diet, you’ve got to cut way back on your carbohydrate intake and follow the other required steps. The Atkins Diet isn’t magic — it asks you to buy into a method for achieving the benefit of weight loss. For Structured Case Analysis to provide the important benefits described below, we ask you to buy into our simple method. No 12 steps required. Just these three:
Step 1 — Adopt the Core Case Analysis Reports
Step 2 — Make the creation of these reports Standard Operating Procedure for every matter your firm handles.
Step 3 — Get everyone on your staff involved in the analysis process.

Adopt the Core Case Analysis Reports — What & Why
Most trial teams have traditionally created some of the following case analysis reports on some cases. For reasons I’ll detail below, we’re urging you to make all six of these reports standard on all cases. I’m proud to report that thousands of firms and government agencies have chosen to make this approach standard on every matter. Two recent examples: the US Securities & Exchange Commission and the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Here are the analysis reports we ask you to create:
• Cast of Characters Spreadsheet — A report listing the persons and organizations critical to the case at hand and an explanation of how they tie to the case.

• Fact Chronology Spreadsheet — A report listing the critical facts and their sources, sorted by date, and linked to the issues on which the facts bear.
• Document Spreadsheet — A report listing documents including date, author(s), recipient(s), and document type.
• Research Spreadsheet — A report listing the case law and statutes relevant to the current matter and links to the issues to which the research relates.
• Issue & Argument Outline — An outline of the claims and their elements and the arguments that tie the facts in the case to these claims.
• Question Spreadsheet — A report listing the unknowns that need to be pinned down before the close of discovery or trial.

Each of these reports serves a very different important purpose. One can’t be substituted for another. And none can be skipped without your case analysis efforts falling short. You’re not holding a Royal Flush if you’re short the Jack. As simple as these reports may be, creating them produces all sorts of benefits. If you expand your case analysis reports to include the six discussed above, I believe you’ll find that...
• You and your trial team can “own” your cases as never before — you’ll run circles, no make that spheres, around your opponents and you’ll impress the heck out of your clients.
• These reports get critical case knowledge out of the heads of individual team members, making it explicit and thereby creating opportunities for thinking crosspollination that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.
• Your case analysis documents will become the raw materials that make it far easier to generate documents required by the court. For example, your Fact Chronology will make it far easier to create Motions for Summary Judgment and to produce the list of facts to which you’re willing to stipulate needed for many Pre-trial Motions.
• When your legal assistant decides to go to law school or your associate leaves to set up his or her own practice, two years of case knowledge won’t walk out the door with them.
• When experts, local counsel, or additional members of your firm join the trial team, you’ll have them up the curve on the case in a fraction of the normal time.

Make the Case Analysis Reports Standard Operating Procedure — What & Why
There’s really two requirements to complete this step: (1) Commit to creating the six case analysis reports on every matter instead of creating some reports on some matters. (2) Fulfill your commitment. I hope the benefits listed below demonstrate the gargantuan value returned by standardization.
If you make it Standard Operating Procedure to create these six analysis reports, I
believe you’ll find that...

• You’ll see the efficiency and the effectiveness of your analysis work on each case skyrocket. I run (jog is a more honest descriptor). When travel or a cold or some such keeps me from running for a couple of weeks, my first time out after this break is even slower than normal. And it’s sloppy and exhausting. However, when I’m in the running groove, six milers are easy and nines aren’t all that bad. The same Practice Makes Perfect phenomenon works for case analysis. If you analyze every case, you get into the analysis groove — you and your team get faster at it and better at it.
• Once you make analysis standard for every case, you’ll find that you quickly generate material that makes future analysis efforts easier and more effective. You develop report templates that you use to jump start the analysis of new matters. And you develop issue outlines and materials about case law and statutes that are likely candidates for reuse in future cases.
• By adopting a standard process, you’ll find it becomes incredibly easy to spot analysis problems in particular cases. Everyone involved in the analysis process comes to understand the typical results and can quickly spot things that deviate from the norm, both in terms of the content that results from the analysis and in the analysis process itself. For example, when the initial Cast of Characters Spreadsheet for a new case is only a page long, warning bells clang in the minds of all who see it. They know that every other first draft of a Cast of Characters has been at least three pages long. Perhaps the case is really this small. Or perhaps the Cast of Characters report needs more work. By making analysis standard, we develop experience-based expectations that guide our work in every case.
• Employing a standard process also makes it far easier to improve your analysis work over time. For example, when you’re given a Document Spreadsheet that’s particularly good, it stands out from the run-of-the-mill and makes you think consciously about what was done differently to create this report and how to move the analysis bar higher so that all future reports are as good.
• Your case analysis reports not only centralize critical case knowledge, they provide the tool by which staff members can be evaluated and provided with feedback. Thus, standardization is required if we’re going to succeed with Step 3 of our method — Getting Everyone on the Staff Involved
• Having a standard process also makes it much easier to train new hires and those newly involved in the analysis process. The process provides you with examples you can use to show new people expected results. And why not make the person who does a particularly good Cast of Characters responsible for teaching new people how to create it? (When you’re just getting going with case analysis and don’t have your own work product to serve as a teaching aid, you could use reports from the Example Case that comes along with the trial version of our CaseMap case analysis tool for this purpose.)
• Some people object to analyzing “small” cases, but when you sign up for our method, you’re committing to analyze every case. You’ll find that analyzing smaller matters is a great way to get practice in the case analysis process. More importantly, can’t we really agree that all cases, even a small ones, have more facts, documents, issues, etc. than anyone can keep straight on their own? All cases are big in terms of the amount of information they involve. Small cases are only small when compared to big super complex ones. Saying you’ve got a small case is like saying Mt. Shasta is a small mountain.

Get the Entire Staff Involved — How & Why
The third step in adopting our case analysis method is to expand the number of people on your staff who are involved in the process. Our objective is to move as much of the analysis process to the lowest-level people within the organization. This is a winner for you and a winner for them. Again, since the work product is standard and shared, it’s easier to train these individuals on your expectations and provide feedback on the results they’re producing.
The case analysis reports we ask you to prepare are not bound for court, but rather are holding tanks for critical case knowledge. They’re permanent drafts that don’t ever have to be perfect. This fact makes it easy to get all staff members into the process and to put new staff members into the mix sooner than later.
Most of the case analysis reports can be co-authored. Taking a divide and conquer approach means you’ll able to get the most out of each staff member and preserve the time of the most highly-skilled for the highest order task. One way to break the task apart is to distinguish objective information from subjective analysis. Lower level people perform the objective work. As greater subjective analysis is required, the analysis baton is passed to higher level people.
Given their very nature, these reports can’t be completed in one sitting but evolve over the course of the case. What you know and think about the case evolves and the purpose of these reports is to have a place to capture this moving understanding so you can get the latest snapshot when needed.
Here’s another way to leverage the involvement of your staff in the case analysis process. Once you’ve standardized the columns in your spreadsheets, it’s a piece of cake to dictate items with which you’re familiar to the spreadsheet standard and have secretarial staff enter these items on your behalf. The spreadsheets become dictation templates making the process far easier both for the person dictating and the person typing the dictation.
Here are some work distribution ideas for each of the core reports:
• Cast of Characters Spreadsheet — Secretarial/administrative staff members should build the initial cast of characters for every matter. They should also take the first crack at the role in case of each person and organization. A paralegal can push the description of each player further along. Paralegals and attorneys can later add subjective information such as credibility evaluation. I bet the first Cast of Character report you’re given after adopting our process will list one or more persons or organizations with which you are unfamiliar. (If it doesn’t, you may want to get your staff to be more inclusive in who and what is being added to the Cast of Characters.)
• Fact Chronology — Paralegals and associates should create a basic Fact Chron based on a review of the Complaint, Answer, interview notes, and other underlying documents. Consider using the dictation idea described above to get administrative staff in the loop. Higher-level team members can later do issue analysis, i.e., make determinations as to which issues a particular fact bears on.
• Document Spreadsheet — Secretarial/administrative staff can start this report by organizing the basic info regarding dates, author(s), recipient(s) and the like. Paralegals take a second pass creating descriptions or summaries.
• Issue & Argument Outline — This outline can start life as a list of claims and their elements. As such, secretarial/admin staff members or paralegals should be able to cull it out of the complaint and answer. Over time, however, this report requires attorney involvement to refine issues and layer in arguments. As mentioned above, once you’ve done a number of cases, your issue outlines are likely to become resources for getting the new case outline off to a fast start.
• Research Spreadsheet — Paralegals and associates can create this report and partners can evaluate the case law organized in it. Again, as mentioned above, once you’ve used our method to analyze a number of cases, your Research Spreadsheets from prior matters are likely to become important resources for getting the research on a new matter off to a fast start.
• Question Spreadsheet — Have all team members contribute based on what they’re reviewing. More senior people on the team can assign questions to various staff members for completion, set due dates, and evaluate the criticality of each question.

Okay, here comes a third set of benefits from adopting our Structured Case Analysis approach. These flow specifically from getting the entire staff involved in the process, something that standardization itself makes possible. If you adopt our Standard Analysis methodology, I believe you’ll find that...
• You’ll divide and conquer the work of analysis, making it easy to accomplish no matter the size of your case load.
• You’ll end up with a happier staff. The core function of your organization isn’t typing letters, creating bills, etc. It’s case analysis. When all staff members take a direct hand in the organization’s core function, it helps them feel great about their work. They’re involved and learning, which makes coming to work more fun and challenges them to grow in their position. You’re working on interesting and important matters. Standardizing case analysis provides a way to let others get pumped up over your cases also.
• You’ll end up with a better staff. Getting people involved in the guts of your cases helps them understand and appreciate the full nature of your work. For example, let’s assume you’re in private practice and your admin staff is now helping with creating a Cast of Characters for each case. When your administrators talk to clients, they’ll come across so much more knowledgeable and upbeat that clients will notice and appreciate it.

Getting Started w/ Structured Case Analysis
A few final thoughts on how to get the Structured Case Analysis process started.
First, don’t wait. Pick a couple of smaller cases and get going today. The process is really very simple. Implementing it doesn’t require fancy planning.
Second, create all six analysis reports for these test cases, not one or two. Don’t stick a toe in the water. Get in the pool.
Third (and this one’s particularly important): Don’t try to get everyone on the staff involved in these initial experiments, rather start by teaching our methodology to the best person or two on your staff. Once you’ve got these key staff members trained, make it their job to mentor the rest of the staff.
A couple of concrete things to do to start the teaching process: Forward them this draft article. Provide an example of the types of reports you would like to have created. (Shameless Self-Promotion: If you download a trial version of our CaseMap case analysis tool from www.casesoft.com, you can print examples of these types of reports from the Example Case that comes with CaseMap.)

Conclusion
I’d greatly appreciate your feedback at gkrehel@casesoft.com or 904.273.5000 x233
Greg Krehel, CaseSoft, a division of Bowne-DecisionQuest

Greg Krehel is CEO of DecisionQuest’s CaseSoft division (www.casesoft.com). CaseSoft is the developer of litigation software tools including CaseMap and TimeMap. In addition to his background in software development, Mr. Krehel has over 15 years of trial consulting experience.

Texas Paralegal Journal © Copyright 2004 by the Legal Assistants Division, State Bar of Texas.

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