Attorneys and clients often focus on whether a case is "winnable." DecisionSet™ believes that the most important judgment call is not whether a party will win or lose at trial but rather whether the trial result will be better than an alternative proposed in settlement negotiations. All too often, a party "wins" at trial but actually loses because the winner's award is financially worse than a previously declined settlement proposal. "Beating" an adversary at trial sometimes inflicts more damage on the victor than the ostensible loser.

To help parties avoid adverse litigation outcomes, DecisionSet™ develops proprietary databases of settlement negotiations and trial outcomes. These databases now include more than 11,700 settlement demands and offers which have been compared with the actual trial results, revealing who wins and loses when settlement negotiations fail.

DecisionSet™ employs multiple statistical methods to determine which factors in litigation cases are correlated with adverse trial outcomes. Analyzing more than 20 classes of variables like case type, attorney experience, party gender, and insurance coverage, DecisionSet™ has identified predictor variables for attorney-litigant decision making errors. When litigants integrate information about these predictor variables with decision sciences research showing how psychological biases and heuristics lead to suboptimal results, they acquire new and valuable tools to assess their alternatives.