Strategy

Prioritize motion practice

Ranks the motions worth filing by leverage per hour, produces an explicit skip list, and ties each filing to a trigger event on the actual schedule.

About 12 minadvancedLitigation

Checked against standard v2 on Sep 29, 2026 revised Sep 19, 2026

What to gather first

Case status: discovery progress, deadlines, trial date
The judge and any standing order or chambers practice you know
The motions you are considering, including the ones you are unsure about
Whether the client is buying an exit, a cap on exposure, or a verdict
Remaining litigation budget and who is available to staff it

Your prompt5,474 characters

Still to fill in: Case status and schedule, Who you represent, Candidate motions, Court, judge, and standing orders

RoleYou are a senior litigator who manages a motion budget and has watched more cases lost to bad sequencing than to bad briefing. You ask what changes if the motion is granted and what changes if it is denied, and if the answer to both is nothing, you refuse to file it no matter how good the argument is.What I needFor Who you represent in Court, judge, and standing orders, take my candidate motions and tell me which to file, in what order, and which to cut. Work inside Budget and staffing constraints.InputsCase status and schedule: Case status and schedule Candidate motions: Candidate motions Who I represent: Who you represent Court, judge, and standing orders: Court, judge, and standing orders Budget and staffing: Budget and staffing constraintsHow to work this1. For every candidate in Candidate motions, write one sentence on what changes if it is granted and one on what changes if it is denied. If nothing meaningful changes on either branch, it goes on the skip list and does not come back. 2. Score each survivor on two axes only: cost in associate and partner hours, stated as a number, and effect on leverage or trial position, stated as what it does to the settlement conversation or the trial record. 3. Rank by leverage per hour, then adjust for procedural order: what must precede what, and what the deadlines in Case status and schedule actually permit. 4. Write an explicit skip list with at least one motion on it, each with the reason: symbolic, unlikely before this judge, better raised at trial, or it teaches the other side what we know. 5. Name the interactions between motions with direction and magnitude. "If the Daubert motion is denied, the partial MSJ on damages is worth roughly a third less because the expert's number survives" beats "these motions interact." 6. Tie each filed motion to a trigger event and a date drawn from Case status and schedule: close of fact discovery, service of expert reports, the pretrial conference, not to a month or a quarter. 7. Flag whatever in Court, judge, and standing orders governs timing or format: pre-motion conference requirements, page limits, meet-and-confer prerequisites, whether this judge defers Daubert. Mark [CHECK STANDING ORDER] for anything you cannot confirm from my inputs. 8. Total the plan's hours against Budget and staffing constraints and say what you would cut first if the budget were halved.Ask me firstBefore you produce anything, ask me these questions, then stop and wait: The schedule, the judge, the candidate motions and the budget are above. These are the things the docket cannot tell me: 1. Has the court already ruled on anything in this case, and how did it go? A judge who has denied you once reads the next filing differently, and that is nowhere on a schedule. 2. Is there a mediation date or settlement window, and would a motion pending over it help me or cost me? 3. How does opposing counsel behave under motion pressure: do they move toward a number, or bill through it? Leverage per hour is a prediction about them, not about the merits. Do not begin work until I answer. If I tell you to proceed anyway, state each assumption you are making at the top of your output and mark it [ASSUMPTION - verify].Output formatA priority table: motion, file or skip, cost in hours, what changes if granted, what changes if denied, trigger event and date. Below it, the skip list with reasons. Then a short narrative on sequence explaining why this order and not another. Then the interactions, each with direction and magnitude. Close with total hours against my budget and the first thing you would cut. End with one line naming the two of my answers that most changed the ranking or the skip list, and how you would have sequenced these filings without them. If an answer changed nothing, say so. It means I should not have been asked.Never do this- A motion plan that would fit any case before any judge is too generic. Rank against this judge's practice, this schedule, and what this client is buying. - No hedging. "It depends on the circumstances" is not a recommendation. Every candidate gets a file or a skip. Cut "arguably" and "it should be noted." Do not tell me to consult an attorney. I am the one signing the brief. - Every rule, local rule, standing order, deadline, or case must come from my inputs or be marked [UNVERIFIED - confirm before you calendar it]. Never invent a page limit, a filing deadline, or a judge's practice. - If you do not know how this judge handles a motion type, say you do not know and tell me where to look. Do not smooth over the gap with fluent prose I will rely on when I calendar the filing. - No padding. If two of six candidates are worth filing, say two and explain the four. Length is not value.Before you answer- Did anything actually land on the skip list, or did I recommend filing everything? - Is every cost estimate a number of hours rather than a word like moderate? - Does every filed motion have a trigger event and a date taken from the schedule I gave you? - Did I name at least one interaction with a direction and a magnitude? - Is any deadline, page limit, or chambers practice here unverified and unmarked? - Change the caption: would this ranking still hold? It should not.

Running it takes you through the three turns (the first prompt, the pressure test, and the follow-up) and a check of the answer, in order. The Cockpit lets you add tunes. Both keep the values you entered. You can change your own copy as you like. It is labeled as yours everywhere it appears.

Pressure-test it

Asks the AI to look for weaknesses in its own answer.

This plan has to be defended to a CFO who treats litigation as a tax, and the person defending it is the client's general counsel, reading it next to a bill she has already called too high. Answer as the general counsel. Which motion do you refuse to pay for, and what do you want filed that is not on this list? Then come back to my side and rewrite the ranking so it survives that conversation without giving up the filing that actually caps exposure.

Go deeper

Asks for more detail and further work once the first answer is right.

Turn the priority order into dates. Build the filing calendar: for each motion I am filing, the trigger event, the predicate discovery that must be complete first, the internal draft deadline working backward from the filing date, the local-rule prerequisite to satisfy, and the go/no-go decision point with the name of the person who makes the call.

4Check what came backPaste the AI's answer and check it, item by item, against this prompt's rules.

Watch for

Standing orders and chambers practices control timing, page limits, and pre-motion conference requirements, and they are not in the local rules. Read the judge's own order before you calendar anything.
The model will invent deadlines and page limits that sound plausible. Verify every date against the scheduling order and the docket.
A summary judgment motion that loses on a genuinely disputed fact can spend the credibility you needed for the partial motion that would have capped damages. Sequence accordingly.
Daubert timing varies widely; many judges defer to the final pretrial conference or to trial, which changes when the ruling can affect settlement.
This analysis is work product and reveals what you know and what you fear. Keep it inside the client team and out of anything you might produce.

What comes back

A priority table listing each motion with file-or-skip, cost in hours, what changes if granted, what changes if denied, and a trigger event with a date; an explicit skip list with reasons; a short narrative justifying the sequence; the interactions between rulings with direction and magnitude; and total hours measured against the budget with the first thing to cut.

See an example answer

*(After you answer the three questions: the court granted plaintiff's motion to compel in April with a pointed comment about defense discovery conduct; mediation is set for Nov 20; and plaintiff's counsel is a shop that bills through motion practice rather than moving toward a number.)* Priority list (defense) | # | Motion | File? | Hours | If granted | If denied | Trigger and date | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | 1 | Partial MSJ on the punitive damages claim | Yes | 70 | Removes the number that makes this case unsettleable; caps exposure before the board meeting | Costs little; it is a narrow, clean legal issue | Pre-motion conference request Sept 5; file Oct 30 | | 2 | MSJ on the Title VII retaliation count | Yes | 220 | Case-dispositive on the largest count | Plaintiff arrives at the Nov 20 mediation with a denial in hand | Same filing date as #1, one brief, one conference request | | 3 | Daubert on plaintiff's economist | Yes | 80 | Cuts the front-pay model that drives the demand | Deferred, most likely; Kness rules at the final pretrial | File with pretrial materials Jan 20 | | 4 | Motion to bifurcate punitives | No | n/a | n/a | n/a | Skip | | 5 | Motion to strike the jury demand | No | n/a | n/a | n/a | Skip | | 6 | Motion to compel the comparator personnel files | Yes | 25 | Gets the comparator evidence the MSJ needs | Nothing lost, and the file is already built | File by July 10; must precede #2 | Skip list. Bifurcation: Kness has denied it in three of the four employment cases on the public docket, and asking signals we expect to lose on liability. Strike the jury demand: the demand was timely under Rule 38 and filing it after the April discovery ruling looks like noise from a party the court has already scolded. [UNVERIFIED - confirm the Kness bifurcation record before relying on the three-of-four figure.] Sequence. Motion #6 first, because #2 is unwritable without the comparator files and fact discovery closes Aug 15. Request the pre-motion conference for #1 and #2 together on Sept 5 so one conference covers both. File both Oct 30, three weeks before mediation, so the motions are pending (not decided) when everyone sits down. #3 rides with the pretrial materials. Interactions. If #1 is granted, the demand should drop meaningfully because punitives are what supports the $2.4M ask; that is the single highest-value 70 hours in this plan. If #2 is denied, #3 roughly doubles in value. Without summary judgment, cutting the damages model becomes the only remaining lever. If #6 is denied, do not file #2; the comparator gap turns a strong motion into a roadmap for plaintiff's opposition. Budget. 395 hours against roughly 400 available. If the budget is halved, cut #2 before #1. #1 is a fifth of the cost and does most of the work the client is actually buying. What your answers changed. That plaintiff's counsel bills through motion practice rather than moving toward a number is what makes the skip list as long as it is. Against a firm that reprices under pressure, the two motions I told you to skip are worth filing for leverage alone and the ranking inverts; against this one they are 90 hours spent on a reply brief. The Nov 20 mediation date is why #1 and #2 both carry an Oct 30 filing date instead of going up as soon as the Sept 5 conference clears; without it there is no reason to hold a finished brief for three weeks, and plaintiff sits down at any settlement discussion with nothing pending against her. Your answer about the April compel ruling changed nothing in the end. The jury-demand motion was already a skip because the demand was timely under Rule 38, and the court's comment about our discovery conduct only gave me a second reason for a call I had already made.

Why this prompt is written this way

## Framework 1. **File only if it changes posture.** One sentence on what changes if granted, one on what changes if denied. If nothing changes on either branch, it goes on the skip list. 2. **Two axes only.** Cost in associate and partner hours: a number, not "moderate." Effect on leverage or trial position. 3. **Rank by leverage per hour, then adjust for procedure.** What must precede what, and what the schedule actually permits. 4. **An explicit skip list.** At least one candidate belongs on it. Symbolic motions, motions this judge does not grant, motions that teach the other side what you know. 5. **Interactions.** Where one ruling changes another motion's value or timing. Be specific about the direction and the size. 6. **Triggers and dates.** Each filing tied to close of fact discovery, expert reports, the pretrial conference, not to a vague quarter. 7. **Chambers practice governs.** Pre-motion conference requirements, page limits, meet-and-confer prerequisites, whether the judge defers Daubert to trial. 8. **Total the spend.** What the plan costs against the budget, and what gets cut first if the budget is halved.