01 · The situation
Settle or fight? The answer takes three weeks — and still hedges.
A manufacturing client terminates a long-running supply agreement. The counterparty serves notice invoking arbitration and claims damages for wrongful termination. The client calls the disputes partner on Monday. The matter opens as D-2291, and the only question that matters is already on the partner's desk: settle or fight — and what does each one cost?
Document review runs overnight. Research answers in plain language. The dashboards show WIP and realisation to the rupee. And the client who called three weeks ago asking whether to settle or fight is still waiting on your memo — because the quantum, the fee run and the precedent are sitting in three separate files.
02 · Decision points
Four ways forward on D-2291 — and the client is paying you to price them.
On paper, four clean paths. In practice you can't price them this week — because the contract set, the correspondence, the quantum and the fee model are in four different places, and nobody has put a number on any of them yet.
03 · As-is
How it gets built today: three weeks, two associates, one hedged memo.
The client calls, the partner takes the brief, the matter is opened. The recommendation is now owed — but nobody owns the number yet.
Two associates pull the agreement and its four amendments and reconstruct three years of correspondence. A third checks the limitation position and whether the arbitration clause bites at all.
Quantum goes into a spreadsheet. A fee estimate is built off a staffing guess. Comparable outcomes are hunted from whoever has been at the firm longest. Three workstreams, three files, no single agreed number.
The partner reviews late and the memo goes out qualified on every path. The client reads it and still cannot decide. The mandate's whole value was the recommendation — and it arrived hedged.
04 · Assisted
The analysis is built overnight. The partner forms the view before lunch.
Same matter, D-2291. The three weeks collapse, because the three separate manual jobs become one automatic one.
Picks the matter up at instruction. The brief lands and the system is already reading the engagement record, the client's contract set, the correspondence and your own closed matters — so D-2291 is live the moment it opens, instead of waiting for an associate to come free.
Gives the recommendation an owner and a clock. It logs the recommendation as owed, runs the limitation and notice positions, and starts the counterclaim window counting — so the call has an owner and a deadline from hour one, instead of drifting until someone asks.
Does the three jobs as one. Instead of quantum, fees and precedent sitting in three separate files, it pulls all three together by morning — exposure, fee run, and what your firm has actually recovered on matters of this shape — and plays the four options forward on one agreed set of numbers.
One screen, four costed paths. The partner opens one view, sees all four options costed on the same basis, and forms the view that morning — not in week three. The system did the assembly. The legal judgement is still the partner's, and the decision is still the client's.
05 · The options, costed
All four costed on the same basis, from their documents and your matters.
Illustrative figures · scenario data, not a live system or a real matter
06 · The playbook
What the paths were weighed against.
This is judgment your best people already carry. Written into the decision, it works on every matter — not just the ones they happen to see.
07 · The call
Counterclaim — window open.
Counterclaim: ₹1.9 Cr recoverable on the unpaid invoices and the quality default.
Evidence holds — agreement, amendments, correspondence, QC records, privilege-tagged.
Statement of counterclaim, quantum and fee estimate drafted overnight.
Queued for the partner to settle and the client to instruct — window closes in 11 days.
Counterclaim, window open
08 · After the call
Take a path — the whole workstream is already staged.
Statement of counterclaim
Drafted against the arbitration clause, dated, pleading the unpaid invoices and the quality default.
Quantum computation
Priced from the client's ledger, broken down line by line, ready to annex.
Evidence pack
The agreement and its four amendments, the correspondence thread, delivery and QC records — pulled, indexed and privilege-tagged.
Fee estimate & scope
Built from your own closed matters of this shape, not a staffing guess — ready to put in front of the client.
Routing & window
Queued for the partner to settle and the client to instruct — counterclaim window closes in 11 days, flagged.
What happened next
The decision leaves the room.
Disputes partner drops the quantum to ₹1.6 Cr — the client is writing off the March consignment; annexures re-linked, statement of counterclaim updated, fee estimate unchanged.
Disputes partner adds the QC inspection report to the evidence pack; the pack and the fee estimate go to the client.
Client instructs. D-2291 advised as a counterclaim, inside the window.
Saved to the firm knowledge base — what was advised, and why. Learned: supply agreement terminated; client's own default position strong, window open — counterclaimed for ₹1.6 Cr.
Illustrative follow-through · scenario data
Supply agreement terminated; client's own default position strong, window open — counterclaimed for ₹1.6 Cr.
Services dispute under a tiered clause; relationship worth preserving — settled at mediation in seven weeks.
Quantum inflated and entitlement weak; contested, and costs recovered on the award.
Every matter you close teaches the system. The next dispute starts from what your firm already knows — not from whoever happens to remember.
09 · As-is vs assisted
Same matter, D-2291 — two very different practices.
| As-is manual · today | Assisted with Decisome | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to a recommendation | ~3 weeks, and it still hedges | By the next morning |
| Basis for the advice | Three rival files, no agreed number | One agreed set of numbers |
| Options priced | One path worked by hand — no time to cost the rest | All four, played forward |
| Associate effort | Hundreds of hours on assembly | Redirected to matters you can't currently staff |
| Precedent used | Whoever has been here longest remembers | Every matter the firm has closed |
| Evidence | Scrambled together at the end, if at all | Pre-assembled, indexed, privilege-tagged |
| Once the client instructs | Workstream built by hand, later | Staged, routed, ready to serve |
| Firm knowledge | Lives with the partner; leaves with them | Captured in your knowledge base |
| Work won | Mandates lost to whoever answered first | Turnaround becomes a reason you're picked |
| Who advises | A partner — late, on partial facts | A partner — on time, fully informed |
D-2291 is an illustrative example built from how commercial disputes are commonly handled, not a client result. The three weeks, the three workstreams and the figures on this page describe the shape of the problem.
Is this your decision — or close to it?