A legal matter risk register pricing five case risks against mitigation cost, showing which of the five mitigations lose money in expectation. Free template.
Five case risks with the cost of acting on each one written next to it. Three of the five mitigations lose money in expectation, which is a real answer rather than a modeling error, and knowing which three is the point.
Legal Intermediate Risk Register Pro engine
After you install, this is the model to open.
What Could Go Wrong in This Matter?
- In your spreadsheet, click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge. No strip? Click the arrow at the bottom-right to open it. You can also use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia.
- Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
- Pick the card with that name and click Load this template. It arrives on a new tab with real numbers already in it.
This one runs on a Pro engine, and every free install includes five full-quality runs on your own numbers, shared across all five Pro engines rather than five for each. After that, Pro is $199/year.
The answer
- Expected exposure
- $249,500 across five live risks
- After every mitigation
- $119,800 bought with $144,000 of spend
- Mitigations that pay
- 1 of 4 the witness deposition, +$17,000 net
- Worst trade
- -$17,500 the quantum expert: cure dearer than disease
Five risks on one live commercial dispute with roughly $2.4M at stake, and a mitigation for each priced at what the work actually costs in fees. Read this register carefully, because it is the one from which the wrong answer is most often taken. Click Run: total expected exposure is $249,500 and the mitigations would bring it to $119,800, so on the face of it half the exposure is buyable.
The net-value column says otherwise for three of the five. The second-pass disclosure review costs $65,000 and removes $56,000 of exposure, so it loses $9,000. The rebuttal expert costs $42,000 and removes $24,500, so it loses $17,500. Counsel advice before the interim application costs $9,000 and removes $4,200, so it loses $4,800. Only the early deposition and witness summons, at $17,000 clear on $28,000 spent, is worth it on money alone.
Two of those three losing lines deserve an argument rather than a decision. Expected value is the right lens when you are running many matters and the losses average out, which is what an insurer or a large claims book is doing. It is the wrong lens on a single matter, where a missed damaging document is not a $400,000 average, it is a case you lose.
If the downside would be existential for the client, buy the mitigation and do not look at the net column. This register exists to tell you what that costs, not to tell you to accept it. The adjournment line is the other thing worth noticing: it carries $22,500 of exposure, its mitigation is priced at zero, and it stays on the sheet for exactly that reason, because listing is not in anybody's gift.
Read it as something your funding and cash flow have to be able to survive rather than as something to solve. Second run, and it is the one that earns its hour. Change the disclosure probability from 0.20 to 0.35 and its mitigated probability from 0.06 to 0.10, which is what a matter with a large unstructured document set looks like, and rerun.
That line becomes the largest exposure on the sheet at $140,000, total exposure goes to $309,500, and the second-pass review flips from losing $9,000 to clearing $35,000. Nothing else on the sheet moves at all. That single sensitivity is the argument for spending an hour estimating that one probability properly. What this cannot tell you is anything about the merits: it prices process risk on a matter, not the claim itself, and a settle-or-trial question belongs in the decision-tree tools.
To adapt it, put your own five risks in, price each mitigation at your real fee estimate rather than at a round number, and keep the unmitigable lines on the sheet with zeros.
The model
It arrives on a tab called Template: Matter Risks, carrying these columns:
- Risk
- Probability
- Impact ($)
- Mitigated prob
- Mitigated impact ($)
- Mitigation cost
Once it is in your sheet
- The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
- Change the numbers to yours. The sheet marks which cells are inputs and which hold formulas, and most labels carry a note explaining the row.
- Press the run button at the bottom of the panel. It is labeled for the tool you are in, and the result lands on its own tab, with a written reading of it beside the figures.
Never used Google Sheets? Start here goes the whole way, in seven steps, and assumes nothing.
Next question
- Which contingency matters actually lose you money?Will the Recovery Cover the Costs?
- What reserve holds nineteen years out of twenty?How Much Should We Reserve Per Matter?
- Is a bell curve the wrong shape for your claims?What Distribution Do Claim Sizes Follow?
- Two experts, one schedule. Where is the settlement zone?Delay Claim: Who Owns the Days?
- Neither side wants to blink. What happens?Deadline Standoff: Hold Firm or Concede?
- Should you take the settlement or go to trial?Settle or Go to Trial?
Every model like this one, and the method behind them: Schedule risk analysis.