In today’s high-stakes plaintiffs’ bar, success is often, and incorrectly, mismeasured by sheer case volume. The metrics of the mass-market legal industry are visible everywhere: billboards boast towering numbers; intake departments celebrate raw leads; and firms pride themselves on how many new files they manage to open each month. This obsession with throughput creates a perception of strength, a kind of legal arms race where the largest pile of signed cases is deemed the victor.
But volume alone does not, and cannot, build true trial leverage. And it certainly does not build great, lasting trial firms.
What truly separates the elite trial firms—those that consistently command top-tier settlements and win career-defining verdicts—from the high-volume settlement mills is not how many cases they sign, but rather, how early, how rigorously and how honestly they screen them.
Early case screening is the quiet, often unglamorous discipline that underpins every highly successful litigation practice. It is a commitment to quality over quantity, a strategic bottleneck that ensures every piece of work the firm undertakes is a case worth fighting. It is also, ironically, the discipline most commonly sacrificed and corrupted in high-volume, industrialized legal practices.
Volume Is Easy. Judgment Is Hard.
Any firm with an ample marketing budget can generate leads. In the modern era, intake scripts can be outsourced, data-mined and automated. Files can be opened with the click of a button. The barrier to entry for signing cases is remarkably low.
But legal judgment cannot be automated.
Trial firms operate on a fundamentally different ethos. They make fewer, more cautious promises at intake because they are asking a set of much harder, often uncomfortable, questions. These questions are designed to stress-test the case at its foundation, before a single dollar of time or capital has been wasted:
- Is Liability Provable? Beyond a simple police report or initial allegation, does the case contain the factual and legal architecture necessary to survive summary judgment and convince a jury?
- Are Damages Real, Documented and Compelling? Are the client’s injuries and losses verifiable, substantial and easily understood by a layperson? Do they evoke a sense of injustice that translates into a large verdict?
- Will This Case Withstand Discovery? What skeletons exist in the client’s closet? What facts or prior statements will defense counsel exploit to attack credibility, and can the firm mitigate those risks from day one?
- Does This Case Improve—or Dilute—Our Trial Posture as a Firm? Will taking on this file strengthen the firm’s reputation for taking only the best cases, or will it create an unnecessary distraction?
Settlement mills, conversely, are often driven by a single, different question: “Can we move this file quickly?” Their metric for success is rapid turnaround, not maximum recovery. The difference in these initial evaluations shows up months or years later—precisely when leverage and the need for credibility matter most.
Early Screening Is a Trial Strategy, Not an Intake Function
In a true trial firm, early case screening is never treated as a mere clerical or administrative step. It is a strategic decision point, a core tenet of the litigation strategy.
From the outset, trial firms evaluate potential cases using the same harsh, cynical lens that experienced defense counsel will later employ. They project forward, asking:
- What motions will defense counsel undoubtedly file (e.g., Daubert, summary judgment)?
- What specific facts and medical records will be attacked as weak points?
- Where are the potential credibility risks in the plaintiff’s history, testimony, or narrative?
- How will a jury—a group of skeptical strangers—ultimately view this plaintiff and their claim?
This proactive, trial-oriented mindset yields two immediate, powerful advantages:
- Weak cases are filtered out early. They are dismissed or referred out before they consume a firm’s most valuable resources: attorney time, institutional credibility, and non-refundable capital (expert fees, discovery costs).
- Strong cases are identified early. This allows the firm to invest immediately, aggressively and deliberately—funding detailed investigations, retaining top-tier experts and building the infrastructure for a massive case, confident that the foundation is solid.
Settlement mills, by stark contrast, often postpone real, hard-nosed evaluation until long after the case is signed—sometimes until records finally arrive, or worse, until the insurance carrier makes a low, initial offer. By then, the firm is already months, or years, into a relationship with a weak case, and the fundamental leverage has been lost.
Selectivity Creates Leverage with Carriers
Insurance carriers and their defense lawyers operate in an ecosystem of information. They know which firms genuinely try cases, and they know which firms don’t. But increasingly, they know something more important: which firms consistently bring clean, well-screened cases.
Early screening creates exponential leverage that a high volume of filings cannot match:
- Defense counsel wastes less time and budget attacking obvious weaknesses because the firm has already pruned the weak cases from its docket.
- Adjusters trust the process. They are more likely to believe that a case has not been signed indiscriminately, leading to a more respectful and efficient negotiating dynamic.
- Threats of trial are inherently more credible when the firm has a reputation for rejecting marginal claims. Every case on the docket is, therefore, one the firm has already judged to be trial-worthy.
A firm that files everything it signs sends a clear, weak signal to the defense bar: this case exists simply because we signed it—not because it legally or factually deserves to be tried. Trial firms, through their selectivity, send the opposite signal: this case is on our docket because we intend to win it.
Case Quality Determines Firm Culture
The act of screening cases is not just an external, client-facing process; it shapes internal culture. The quality of the firm’s caseload determines the quality of the firm’s internal life.
High-volume, low-screening environments tend to produce a specific, often toxic, culture:
- Burnout and resentment among associates forced to service unwinnable files.
- Overworked case managers drowning in unnecessary administrative tasks for marginal matters.
- Reactive lawyering, where the firm constantly plays defense, responding to emergencies and chasing down missing documents.
- A pervasive “move it along” mentality focused on throughput, not excellence.
Conversely, trial-oriented firms with robust, lawyer-driven screening processes create a culture defined by:
- Strategic case planning from day one, with clear trial paths.
- Fewer emergencies and fire drills because weaknesses were identified and managed upfront.
- Lawyers who think like litigators and strategists, not processors or paper-pushers.
- A team aligned around excellence, long-term impact, and institutional reputation, not monthly throughput numbers.
The simple truth is that culture follows case quality.
Ethical Screening Protects Clients—and the Firm
Signing a case that objectively should never have been filed helps no one—least of all the client. Early, candid screening is an ethical obligation that protects both parties:
It protects clients by:
- Avoiding false expectations and managing realistic outcomes from the initial consultation.
- Preventing years of unnecessary delay and emotional toll for cases that are likely to result in only marginal outcomes.
- Encouraging swift and appropriate referrals to other, better-suited counsel (e.g., worker’s compensation, medical malpractice) when a case is outside the firm’s specific trial expertise.
It protects firms by:
- Preserving priceless credibility with courts, judges and carriers, reducing the risk of being labeled an “indiscriminate filer.”
- Reducing potential malpractice risk associated with filing weak or hastily investigated claims.
- Aligning the firm’s most valuable resources—time, talent, and capital—only with cases that fully justify that investment.
Settlement mills often rely on a strategy of attrition—signing weak cases and hoping they quietly close with a small offer. Trial firms, by contrast, rely on candor, honesty and a commitment to only take on the fights they are prepared to finish.
Trial Firms Think in Portfolios, Not Pipelines
The difference in approach is a difference in business model. Settlement mills operate pipelines: new cases go in at one end, and small offers or dismissals come out the other. The goal is mechanical, high-speed processing.
Trial firms manage portfolios:
- A mixed-but-curated docket of high-value, trial-ready cases that sustain the firm.
- Strategically selected claims that reinforce the firm’s reputation in specific, high-value practice areas.
- Matters chosen with long-term leverage and institutional reputation in mind.
Early screening is the method by which that portfolio is built and maintained. Every single case accepted is a public signal to the market, the judiciary and the defense bar about who the firm is and the level of quality it tolerates.
The Hidden Cost of ‘Just One More Case’
Firms that chase volume often justify the inclusion of marginal or weak cases with familiar, seductive refrains: “It might settle.” “We’ll see what the records say.” “It doesn’t hurt to sign it.”
This is a dangerous and expensive delusion. Every marginal case accepted carries a hidden, corrosive cost:
- It consumes finite attorney time that could have been spent advancing a top-tier case.
- It dilutes the focus of the firm’s most senior litigators and paralegals.
- It weakens negotiation posture across the entire docket, as defense counsel recognizes the firm’s underlying need to “clear the decks” of its weaker files.
Trial firms understand that opportunity cost is not merely theoretical; it is real, ruthless and must be accounted for at intake. The few minutes saved by lax screening are paid for by hundreds of hours of inefficiency later.
Conclusion: Trial Firms Are Built at Intake
Ironically, early, disciplined screening is precisely what allows a firm to grow successfully without slowly drifting into the oblivion of being a settlement mill. As firms scale—as intake volume increases, as the pressure to sign more cases rises and as standards are tested—the firms that maintain lawyer-driven, rigorous screening processes preserve their:
- Case quality and integrity.
- Trial readiness and institutional memory.
- Institutional credibility with the people who matter most: judges and jurors.
Those that fail to enforce this core discipline will slowly, perhaps without even realizing it, drift from the challenging, rewarding practice of trial law into the easier, less profitable and ultimately less respectable world of case processing.
The line between a true trial firm and a settlement mill is not ultimately drawn in the courtroom, where the case is won or lost. It is drawn at intake.
Early case screening is the strategic forge where:
- Standards are enforced.
- Culture is set.
- Leverage is created.
- Reputation is protected.
Case volume may temporarily inflate short-term metrics and marketing spend. But only early, honest and disciplined screening builds a firm that defendants take seriously—and juries respect.
