Lawyers and Confidence Levels

One of the challenges that in-house and outside counsel often face is how to qualify their advice when, for example, some important information is missing or the advice is needed in a particularly urgent time frame. These sorts of situations can lead to overqualified or cautious advice which in turn could impact the quality of the resulting business decision and the value of the input provided by the law Department and their external partners..

One approach which can help overcome this difficulty is to express the advice or opinion subject to a confidence level (e.g. low/medium/high) with a description of each level. The level reflects the conditions under which the advice is provided such as: the amount of available information, the novelty or complexity of the issue and the time and/or resources available. This tracks the approach taken, for example, by intelligence agencies in evaluating the reliability of intelligence sources or information.

The assigned confidence level can (and should) be revisited as more information becomes available and the picture becomes clearer This of course can and should be revisited as the matter progresses, for example more information becomes available within the timeframe for analysis.

Read more on this subject and creating effective and sustainable relationships with outside counsel here:

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