Many companies turn to their lawyers to seek a prospects advice before deciding whether to settle or pursue formal recovery of a dispute. At first glance this seems the sensible thing to do, why not turn to a legal expert to advise on prospects? After all, it’s most likely to be a legal process that will determine the final outcome of the dispute.
Behavioural economics challenge this notion and offer an alternative view regarding the reliability of individual expertise.
In his 2004 book, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, James Surowiecki argues that individual expertise is consistently outperformed by the aggregation of the team’s knowledge.
James Surowiecki’s research is particularly relevant to construction claims, where many factors may determine the outcome of a dispute. For example, engineers may provide opinions on technical issues, planners on delay, quantity surveyors on cost, lawyers on entitlement and so on. So why turn to a single expert to determine prospects?
Lewis Woolcott pioneers the aggregation of the team’s knowledge to accurately predict claim outcomes. Our fast and accurate risk-based approach to prospects advice provides a range of probable outcomes that identifies likely claim recovery values.
Our goal is to use the statistical data that we have collected to provide ever increasing accuracy of claim prediction and forecasting.