HERE IS WHAT YOU SAID:
"A lot of silly stuff gets tossed around on this board."
You are right. Like this statement in your post;
"And there is no way to assign a probability of success. If there were the lawyers would save their clients a lot of money by showing this probability to them and negotiating a settlement one way or the other."
As any experienced trial attorney will attest to, when you sign up a case in your field you need to assess the probability of it generating some money for you, unless you are taking it pro-bono.
To take a case on contingency basis means one is pretty sure there will be some money in the case for the law firm. To take it on contingency, and agree to from the costs with your own money means the lawyer considers the case a "Sure Bet" that it will make him some big bucks, plus paying backs all the costs that he fronts...
And to conclude that DM did not spend months in doing just such evaluation is plain silly...
END OF THREAD...
Gil...
