6.8 Legal Model Wizard

The Legal Model Wizard automatically creates model structure for case scenarios in a few easy steps. Although this is a good first set of steps towards building your model, note that the model generated will not be complete.

You will need to add probabilities for issue results and financial consequences of case scenarios. You may need to modify the model to account for issue results other than yes/no.

To start the Legal Model Wizard:

• Choose File > New Legal Model Wizard from the menu.

The wizard will open and you proceed through a series of steps to setup your model scenarios. First, you will be presented with some text describing what the wizard will do as well as additional changes you will need to make to the model generated by the wizard.

• Click Next after reviewing the text.

Step 1: Define/order the major issues in the case.

• Change the number of issues in the case as needed.

• Enter each issue as a question where the finding/ruling outcome is unknown.

• Use the up/down controls to sort the issues in the order they would be applied in the case.

• Click Next when finished.

The image below shows issues related to an example breach of contract case. In the example case, TV Utilities is suing Kool Coal for providing coal that did not meet contractual specifications. They claim the bad coal caused equipment damage as well as financial losses related to the closing of the facility.

Step 2: Define the next step for each issue finding/ruling.

• For the first issue, define the next step for a finding/ruling of Yes and for No.

• Next to Issue Result Yes, choose one of the following.

  • One of the subsequent issues.

  • End the model scenario with a single value for the scenario.

  • End the model scenario with three estimated values for the scenario.

• Choose from among the options above for Issue Result No.

• Click Next Issue to proceed to the next issue and repeat the steps above.

• When all issues are complete, click Next at the bottom.

The following images show the selections for each of the three issues for this example case.

Step 3: Create your model.

The wizard steps are now complete, and you can generate the model in several formats as shown below.

Click the Create a new Decision Tree button to create a model in the standard decision tree format. For this example model, the following tree would be generated. Note that the Copy Decision Tree to Clipboard button generates identical structure, but places it in the clipboard, so it can be pasted into an existing model.

Note that each legal issue is shown as a yellow note. Under the note, you will see the Yes/No issue results branches leading to the next issue or the end of a model scenario. You will need to add probabilities for each issue result.

When a single value was selected for the next step, a single terminal node is added to terminate the case scenario. You will need to add the financial consequences for that model scenario.

When the three estimates option was selected for the next step, three terminal nodes are added to terminate the case scenarios. You will need to add financial consequences each of the three. You will also need to add probabilities for each of the low, medium and high estimates (commonly but not exclusively 0.25, 0.5, 0.25). You should also edit the node labels for the 3 estimates to indicate what is being estimated.

The following is the generated model with values added. With the values, the model can now be calculated.

Click the Create a new Influence Diagram button to generate the model in the bubble/influence diagram format. Note that influence diagrams cannot be analyzed, but they can be instructive with regards to how the case will be presented. The exported influence diagram will typically need to be modifed by moving/resizing the nodes to clean up the presentation.

After cleaning up the diagram, it could look like the following.

Example models from this use of the are available with your software in the Legal folder.

• LegalWizard-DecisionTree.trex - decision tree from wizard

• LegalWizard-DecisionTree-Values.trex - decision tree with values added

• LegalWizard-InfluenceDiagram - cleaned up influence diagram