THE ADVOCATE 711
VOL. 79 PART 5 SEPTEMBER 2021
twice the heft of perceived gains. For the defendant, the expenditure in
legal fees expected from eight or more months of litigation weighed more
heavily in the balance than the possible gain in defence credibility that
another month of discovery could produce.
In the decade since its publication, Kahneman’s book has been enormously
influential. Many of the biases and cravings he identified are discussed
in an early chapter of Litigation Interest and Risk Assessment (“LIRA”),
an invaluable book co-authored by Michaela Keet, Heather Heavin and
John Lande (American Bar Association, 2020). The co-authors argue that
the strong pull exerted by these shortcuts in decision making must be
understood before one can fully appreciate the empirical and probabilitybased
techniques for assessing LIRA in dispute resolution that they illustrate
in their book.
Readers of the LIRA and Kahneman books will have a much deeper
understanding of whether the two-way Zipper and its “zip-em-up” analogues
work in favour of your client’s interests or against them.
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