In this course, students litigate a civil case—interviewing the client, investigating the facts, researching the law, drafting the pleadings, engaging in discovery, preparing the trial brief, and negotiating a settlement. I will divide the class into two law firms, so that half of you will represent the Plaintiff and half of you will represent the Defendant. Each of you will be assigned an adversary from the opposing law firm. You will be individually responsible for drafting and serving upon your adversary all of the written assignments in the case. But you will also collaborate with the other members of your firm in all other litigation activities—such as discussing and planning strategy, interviewing clients and other witnesses, investigating the facts, and performing legal research.

I will be teaching this course in person every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon commencing at 1:00 in Room 201. But all of our SIMULATIONS (e.g., witness interviews and depositions) will be conducted in small groups outside of normal class time. These simulations are usually held in one of the small conference rooms down the hallway from the Clinics.

There is one required text: THOMAS A. MAUET & DAVID MARCUS, PRETRIAL (11th ed. 2023) (paperback) (Aspen) (ISBN 9781543857979). It is a superb treatise on how to handle the pretrial litigation of a civil suit. As we move through the semester, the pages I assign will guide you at every stage of our lawsuit.

What lawsuit will we be litigating? It's a case called Sullivan v. Royal Life Insurance Company, a lawsuit concocted by the PRETRIAL authors, who have created realistic documents for it—including medical records, banking records, a police report, an autopsy report, a life insurance application, a contract, business correspondence, and interoffice memoranda. As in real life, the lawsuit begins with the Plaintiff and the Defendant NOT being in possession of all the same documents. So the authors created two different case files—one for the Plaintiff and one for the Defendant. Once we have determined which party you will represent, I will supply you with the appropriate case file. This will happen within a few hours after our first class session.

Sullivan is a contract dispute between a life insurance company (Defendant) and the insured's widow (Plaintiff). The Plaintiff claims that her husband's death was accidental, entitling her to recover under the double indemnity provisions of the insurance agreement. Defendant claims that the husband's death was a suicide, brought on by the husband's increasing financial and health problems, and argues that the suicide clause of the insurance agreement bars the Plaintiff from recovering any money at all.

There are eight witnesses in the case. I will portray all eight of them. Each of you will be given the job of interviewing, deposing, and/or defending the deposition of one witness.

At our first class session—on Tuesday afternoon, August 22, commencing at 1:00—each student will be assigned to represent either the Plaintiff or the Defendant, and each student will be paired with an adversary from the other side. (If there is a student in the class against whom you'd like to be pitted, let me know.) Within hours after class, I will send you by email (1) either the Plaintiff's or the Defendant's case file, depending on which client you're representing; (2) a roster of all the students in the Plaintiff's and the Defendant's law firms; (3) a list of the adversary pairings; and (4) either the Plaintiff's or the Defendant's syllabus, depending on which client you're representing.

There are two other steps that I must accomplish at our first class session. Even at this early point in the semester, the CLIENTS require urgent attention—they must be interviewed promptly. Thus, before the end of class on August 22, I will hand out some initial witness assignments. I will select two Plaintiff's lawyers who will jointly handle the widow herself. And I will select two Defendant's lawyers who will jointly handle the claims manager for the insurance company.

All other witness assignments must wait until you have read the case file, searching for the identities of the other six witnesses.

I will meet with you only once a week. On Tuesdays, only the Plaintiff's lawyers should come to class; on Thursdays, only the Defendant's lawyers should come to class. (Since we are meeting jointly on Tuesday, August 22, there will be no class session on Thursday, August 24.)

In our normal Tuesday/Thursday class sessions, I will play the head of your firm's litigation department. We'll talk strategically about what needs to be done next in representing the client. I will preview your upcoming written assignments, and we'll talk about how to handle them. Those assignments are set forth, on a weekly basis, in the syllabus that I have prepared for your law firm.

For our first class session, please read PRETRIAL, Part A, Section 1 (pages 3-17).