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-One of the sainted [[risk controller]]s of a financial services firm. They deal with ongoing customer complaints and, where clients have not come up to expectation, prosecute claims on the firm’s behalf. The litigation team would also claim have an advisory function, and encourage their colleagues to consult them ahead of time to avoid future angst. This is a theoretical but not actual function, because no-one in their right mind would ask a litigation lawyer to bless any course of action more contentious than sitting cross-legged in a padded cubicle having first signed a lengthy [[disclaimer]].
+{{A|people|{{image|Tin hat|jpg|Do we need a [[process agent]], sir?}}}}{{d|{{PAGENAME}}|/ˌlɪtɪˈgeɪʃən ˈlɔːjə/|n|}}
-Litigation lawyers are short the same option as is any [[risk controller]]: There is no upside from signing anything off that has not been fully diffused in a [[circle of escalation]].
+One of the sainted [[risk controller]] functions of a financial services firm, the [[litigation]] department deals with customer claims, where the firm has disappointed expectations, and prosecutes the firm’s own ones, where its clients have.
-Thus, an in-house [[litigation]] team is basically the [[complaints department|complaints division]] of the firm. Be wary when these people wield inordinate influence. In recent times, like its equivalent in the ''Sirius Cybernetics Corporation'', litigation teams have gone from half a junior lawyer, on flexi-time, between spells of maternity leave, to fully weaponised Death Stars of fusty, naturally censorious [[Mediocre lawyer|solicitors]] with no appetite to make any call or take any risk, however remote.
+In a well-run firm, therefore, you might expect [[litigation]] to be an unglamorous backwater.
-And that’s assuming [[litigation lawyer]]s really are glorified customer complaint reps. The [[Litigation|alternative]] is worse.
+And, indeed, this is how it used to be.
-{{seealso}}
+But, after the dislocations of recent times, many a [[litigation department]] has, like [[human resources]], come to resemble some kind of [[military-industrial complex]].
+Teams have gone from half a junior lawyer, on flexi-time, between spells of maternity leave, to fully weaponised Death Stars of fusty, censorious [[Mediocre lawyer|solicitors]] who will decline to make any call, however safe, or sanction any risk, however remote.
+===Litigation advisory===
+But as the world shakes off the malignities of the last decade; as the business environs drift back to the benign, the pendulum might at last be falling back.
+So, to keep themselves in silk in times of fair fortune, {{t|litigation}} teams have confected an ''advisory'' function. In this guise they encourage their transactional colleagues to ''consult'' them, ahead of time, to avoid future angst.
+They have contrived “risk radars”, invoking a of sixth sense for trouble that has proven so far elusive, and “[[Risk taxonomy|risk taxonomies]]”, by which they subdivide the [[future]] by reference to their bitter experiences of the past — all this despite their regular admonitions [[Past results are no guarantee of future performance|not to regard it as any kind of guide to what is yet to come]].
+“Litigation advisory” is thereby a theoretical but not actual function, because no-one in their right mind would ask a litigation lawyer to bless any course of action more contentious than sitting cross-legged in a padded cubicle having first signed a [[disclaimer]].
+Signing off hypothetical risk scenarios in the abstract is just not how [[litigator]]s roll: they are are short the same [[option]] as is any other [[risk controller]], only they know in detail  what goes down when that option is exercised: they know better than anyone that there is no upside from signing off any [[risk]] that has not been fully diffused in a [[circle of escalation]], underwritten in blood by someone else (such as a [[Sullivan and Cromwell]] partner)<ref>Who, thanks to a crafty assumption on page 73 of its [[legal opinion]] ''won’t have underwritten it at all.''</ref> and [[socialise|socialised]] to the [[General Counsel]].
+===Litigators as contract consultants===
+Nor are litigators any better a source of advice about contract ''drafting'' than are trauma surgeons about motor-vehicle engineering. For what better insight can a [[litigator]] give than, “for Christ’s sake, don’t wind up in court?”
+Show me a commercial lawyer who doesn’t know ''that.''
+For if you ''do'' wind up in court, hasn’t your [[contract]] ''already'' failed you utterly? To be sure, it might be a nice surprise to find the deckchair to which you are clinging floats, even as the ship whose name is stencilled on it descends to a watery tomb a mile below you, but how much ''nicer'' would it be, were it still sitting on the sun-deck of that very vessel, with you on it, steaming sedately towards the New World?
+[[Contract]] design should ''avoid'' icebergs. A litigator can only help sort out whose fault it is when one has been ''hit''.
+===The good times are a-comin’===
+But as the world wakes up to the enormity of war, inflation, stagnation, [[cryptobabble]], tech collapse and the wholesale annihilation of the [[HR|HR woketariat]] — replaced by [[Chatbots|GPT-3 chatbots]] schooled on petabytes of Q-ANON chatter they found on the dark web — look, every cloud has a silver lining, doesn’t it? — we expect litigation to shortly ''roar'' back into fashion.
+Redundant regulatory change lawyers: ''now'' would be the time to start swotting up the difference between ''mens rea'' and ''actus reus''.
+{{sa}}
 *[[Risk controller]]
+*[[Cryptobabble]]
 *[[Chicken licken]]
-{{dramatis personae}}
+{{ref}}
-{{draft}}