Litigation Preparation Pack

We built the Litigation Preparation Pack because we saw too many litigators treating case strategy like a hackathon. You have a complex commercial dispute, and your "strategy" is a folder named FINAL_FINAL_v2 on your desktop, filled with scattered notes and unlinked PDFs. That's not a strategy; that's a liability.

When you're managing a litigation lifecycle, you can't afford to rely on memory or ad-hoc workflows. The friction starts at intake. Without a standardized case-brief.md, your team is guessing at the claims matrix instead of mapping facts to legal elements. You're spending billable hours reconstructing the case narrative instead of analyzing the opposing counsel's weak spots. If you're also drowning in the document deluge, our e-discovery-automation-pack helps ingest and tag data, but discovery doesn't exist in a vacuum. It feeds directly into your case strategy. If the strategy is broken, the discovery output is wasted, and you're left with a mountain of data and no path to verdict.

The problem compounds during discovery. Without a structured checklist aligned with FRCP Rule 26, you risk missing initial disclosure timelines or preservation duties. A 2025 analysis from US Legal Support ^[3] emphasizes that effective early case assessment improves litigation strategy by evaluating risks and costs from the start. Skip that assessment, and you're flying blind. You might issue interrogatories that are too broad, triggering objections and delays, or miss the duty to supplement. Every missed deadline is a potential sanction. Every unstructured deposition is a missed opportunity to lock in admissions.

Why Missed Deadlines and Ad-Hoc Depositions Cost You the Case

Every hour you spend chasing missing evidence or re-formatting a deposition outline is an hour you're not spending on the opposing counsel's weak spot. The cost isn't just time; it's exposure. In litigation, a missed deadline isn't a reminder you can snooze; it's a judge's order you've violated.

Consider the Rule 16 scheduling order. This isn't a suggestion. It's a binding directive that sets the trajectory for the entire case. Miss a status conference deadline or a disclosure cutoff, and you risk sanctions, evidence preclusion, or an adverse inference instruction. A 2022 Everlaw guide ^[2] defines trial preparation as the collection and organization of the raw materials an attorney will need for a hearing. If those materials are disorganized, your trial prep fails. The downstream incident is a motion to strike, a mistrial, or a settlement under duress.

Depositions are where strategy meets execution. Courtroom Sciences notes that thorough witness preparation is a top best practice ^[1]. Without a structured outline, you're leaving credibility management to chance. You might walk into a deposition with a generic Word doc, missing the chance to impeach a witness with a prior inconsistent statement. You might forget to flag a critical exhibit reference, leaving the witness's testimony unanchored. The opposing counsel sees the gap and exploits it. The result is a deposition that tells no story and builds no leverage.

The operational drag is real. A 2026 Harvey blog post ^[4] describes how litigators use structured tools across the lifecycle to manage complex records and sharpen strategy. Teams that rely on manual processes spend excessive time on logistics—formatting calendars, validating document chains, checking objection codes—time that should be spent on case theory. The latency in your workflow becomes latency in your judgment. You're reacting to the case instead of driving it.

How a Structured Intake Prevents Rule 26 Sanctions

Imagine a team handling a breach of contract claim with 50,000 emails. They skip the structured intake. They jump straight to discovery. The discovery-checklist.md in the pack would have forced them to map the preservation duties against the custodians. Without it, they miss a key custodian. Opposing counsel moves to compel. The judge grants the motion and imposes a cost sanction. The case is already bleeding before the first deposition.

Later, during the deposition of the project manager, the lawyer relies on a Word doc outline. They forget to flag a specific email thread. The witness contradicts a prior statement that wasn't in the outline. The lawyer has no exhibit reference to impeach. The witness's credibility stands unchallenged. The case collapses.

Now, picture that same team using the Litigation Preparation Pack. The skill.md orchestrator guides them through case assessment first. The case-brief.md enforces a structured issue matrix aligned with FRCP rules. The discovery-checklist.md ensures Rule 26 compliance, flagging the duty to supplement and initial disclosure deadlines. When it's time for the deposition, the deposition-outline.yaml structure forces the lawyer to link topics to exhibit references and objection flags. The YAML schema ensures no critical section is empty.

The validate-calendar.sh script runs against the trial calendar JSON, catching a missing Rule 16 status conference date before the filing goes out. The deposition-schema.json validator catches the missing exhibit reference in the outline. The team walks into trial with a validated, compliant, and aggressive strategy. A 2026 Harvey blog post ^[4] describes how litigators use structured tools across the lifecycle to manage complex records and sharpen strategy. That's the difference between chaos and control. The pack doesn't just store your work; it enforces the discipline required to win.

Compliance, Validation, and Trial-Ready Workflows

Once the pack is installed, your workflow shifts from reactive to validated. The trial-calendar.json isn't just a document; it's a JSON schema-driven template that enforces critical deadlines. You run the validation script, and it exits non-zero if you've missed a Rule 16 mandate or a local rule requirement. This is CI/CD for trial logistics. You get immediate feedback on compliance errors before they reach the court.

The deposition-outline.yaml ensures every witness profile includes valid objection codes and exhibit references. The validators/deposition-schema.json enforces these constraints programmatically. If you try to save an outline without a witness profile or with an invalid objection code, the validator fails. You fix the issue before the deposition, not during cross-examination.

The case-brief.md produces a production-grade brief that aligns facts with defenses. It's not a free-form document; it's a structured template that forces you to address parties, claims, defenses, facts, issues, and strategy. The references/frcp-key-rules.md serves as a canonical knowledge base, extracting the mandates of Rules 16 and 26, including pretrial conference requirements, scheduling order deadlines, and the duty to supplement. You don't have to hunt for the rule; it's embedded in the workflow.

The scripts/validate-calendar.sh acts as your gatekeeper. It validates the trial calendar JSON against required fields, deadline logic, and Rule 16 compliance. If the calendar is malformed, the script exits non-zero, preventing you from filing a defective document. The tests/validate-deposition.test.sh asserts pass/fail behavior on your outlines, running the schema validator against the worked example and a malformed input. You get regression testing for your litigation strategy.

This pack slots seamlessly into your broader tech stack. If you need to automate court filings, pair it with the court-filing-automation-pack. For a full technology implementation, the legal-tech-pack covers document management and matter management. If you're handling M&A disputes, the m-a-due-diligence-checklist-pack complements this workflow with deal-specific diligence. And for the research phase, the legal-research-ai-pack feeds directly into the case brief, ensuring your strategy is grounded in current authority.

What's in the Litigation Preparation Pack

• skill.md — Orchestrator skill that defines the litigation preparation workflow, references all templates, references, scripts, validators, and examples, and guides the agent through case assessment, discovery, deposition strategy, and trial planning.
• templates/case-brief.md — Production-grade case brief template covering parties, claims, defenses, facts, issues, and strategy alignment with FRCP rules.
• templates/deposition-outline.yaml — Structured YAML template for deposition strategy including witness profile, topics, line of questioning, objection flags, and exhibit references.
• templates/trial-calendar.json — JSON schema-driven trial calendar template enforcing critical deadlines, status conferences, and trial events per Rule 16 and local rules.
• templates/discovery-checklist.md — Comprehensive discovery checklist aligned with Rule 26 initial disclosures, interrogatories, requests for production, and preservation duties.
• references/frcp-key-rules.md — Canonical knowledge extraction of FRCP Rules 16 and 26, including pretrial conference mandates, scheduling orders, initial disclosure timelines, and duty to supplement.
• references/witness-prep-strategies.md — Expert guidance on selecting, preparing, and presenting percipient and expert witnesses, including direct/cross examination techniques and credibility management.
• references/trial-tech-best-practices.md — Best practices for integrating technology at trial, including demonstrative exhibits, presentation software, courtroom tech protocols, and contingency planning.
• scripts/validate-calendar.sh — Executable shell script that validates a trial calendar JSON against required fields, deadline logic, and Rule 16 compliance, exiting non-zero on failure.
• validators/deposition-schema.json — JSON Schema validator for deposition outline YAML structure, ensuring required sections, valid objection codes, and exhibit references are present.
• examples/worked-case.yaml — Worked example of a complete deposition outline for a hypothetical commercial dispute, demonstrating proper structure and strategy.
• tests/validate-deposition.test.sh — Test script that runs the deposition schema validator against the worked example and a malformed input, asserting correct pass/fail behavior.

Ship with Confidence, Not Hope

Stop shipping ad-hoc case strategies. Upgrade to Pro to install the Litigation Preparation Pack. Ship with confidence, not hope.