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-One of the sainted [[risk controller]]s of a financial services firm. an inhabitant of the [[litigation department]]. Litigators deal with ongoing customer complaints and, where clients have not come up to expectation, prosecute claims on the firm’s behalf. The {{t|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}}