Chapter C6
Part B Conclusion: Plan Honestly
As we come to the end of this part B, let us pause and ponder the lessons we have learnt.
We have examined five key rules on planning litigation. Here is a very quick recap:
One, legal wars are not fought for glory. There is by definition no glory in any kind of war. You fight a legal war because there is benefit in fighting it and you believe it can be won easily. This is why you must always plan the war without being unduly hampered by moral considerations. The law gives us tools with which to fight. If it is legal to use a particular tool, you use it. Your fight must be amoral.
Second, wars are dangerous. Even if you believe you can win, you may end up losing for totally unforeseen reasons. Winning is nice to have, but not losing is a must have. You must first plan your defense to a standard that will give you confidence that you will not lose. Once you are confident that you will not lose, you may then go on to make a plan on how to win.
Third, you don’t always have the luxury of choosing whether you will fight. Much too often, people have wars thrust on them. You may face other situations where the war was worth fighting to begin with but has now become unprofitable. In such cases, you must plan a defensive war.
Four, not all legal wars can be won in all circumstances and at all times. Very often, you can win a legal war at one time but not another, using one attack sequence but not another. Wars are frequently a matter of timing and roll-out. When you plan a winning strategy, you must plan not just your attack, but also the timing of your attack, the nature of your attack, and the order in which you will attack various targets. Remember, it’s always a case of when, where and how.
Finally, you may start a legal war confident that you will win. But in the end, you can only have the ability to win but you can never have the ability to force your enemy to lose. It’s your enemy who controls its ability to lose. If you enemy is good enough, he will rob you of your victory by being unbeatable. You need to plan for this. If you have not planned for it, you must always look for early signs of a war that cannot be won. When it becomes clear that you are in an unwinnable war, you must immediately create and actively implement a plan that will create and sustain a stalemate.
Beyond these five simple rules lies a fundamental truth: it is always possible to plan contingencies. While the world is uncertain, you can always devise plans which will be able to deal with the most statistically likely scenarios. Realistically, most situations have only so many highly likely outcomes. These can be predicted. It’s a matter of optimizing the planning process. It is also a matter of being realistic.
This idea lies at the heart of the planning process. In all that you do, and all that you imagine will happen, your total focus must always be on cold rational planning. Above all else, you must never allow extraneous considerations to override cold rationality. I cannot stress this enough. Plans fail because they are not ‘honest’, meaning that they are not coldly rational but allow themselves to be guided by other considerations.