The cost of litigation is rarely easy to predict, but in most cases, your personal or business insurance may provide the full cost of your legal defense. Where we provide services on a direct-bill basis, Z&A prides itself on providing extraordinary representation with outsized value relative to our fees.

Only a jury or judge can ultimately determine liability, but our highly experienced attorneys have decades of experience carefully evaluating potential liabilities across a very broad scope of civil litigation. While a court’s decision can never be predicted with certainty, we can help you understand the potential outcomes of your case, as well as how and why they may vary. If you have an applicable insurance policy or contractual indemnity, any damages awarded against you could be covered by another entity.

Knowing an opposing party’s motivation and propensities can provide significant insights that develop into litigation or settlement advantages. We will work with you to account for the intangibles which may not readily present themselves but nevertheless could bolster your defense and help resolve your case favorably.

If your insurance carrier has referred your defense to us, it will pay for your defense costs, including our legal fees and any expenses such as expert fees and court costs. However, you are and will always remain our client, irrespective of how your defense is paid. If we are defending you from a lawsuit, our professional and ethical obligations are strictly to you. Your insurance carrier will likely have the right to settle your case if it wants to do so at its own expense, but our legal duties will always be to you as our client.

The legal process is sometimes slow, but it is not idle, nor should you be if you are sued. If you are served, you should promptly retain qualified counsel. Regardless of whether you are served with a complaint or a subpoena, ignoring official legal documents can have disastrous consequences, including a default verdict in favor of the plaintiff and the loss of your insurance coverage for the lawsuit. If you believe litigation is imminent, you should carefully review any legal correspondence or pleadings you receive, and retain counsel.

We are civil litigators and only practice in civil lawsuits and non-litigated civil matters. If you are facing potential criminal liability, you should retain a qualified criminal defense attorney to represent your interests in that case. If your criminal case may potentially generate a related civil lawsuit, we can work to optimize a potential future civil defense in cooperation with your criminal defense counsel.

Our legal services include a personal touch, and we look to develop a relationship with each client based on their needs. Your Z&A attorney will take the time to learn the facts of your case and to understand the events it concerns just as you do. We love to meet personally with our clients and when doing so is impractical, we meet virtually. Your attorney will look for your input on much of the factual history behind your case and utilize both telephone and email as needed to efficiently represent you, helping you stay focused on the rest of your personal and professional life. We like to say that you should not go to sleep with an unanswered question about your case – if it’s on your mind, we want to put your mind at ease, so don’t hesitate to call your Z&A lawyer.

Typically, your time investment in your case will vary depending on the stage of the lawsuit. At the beginning of the case, we need your help to understand its history; and when we receive written discovery questions from the other side, we will need your participation in preparing responses. A larger time commitment is needed if your testimony will be taken under oath in a deposition. Sometimes, your participation at a mediation is necessary or helpful, but the most significant time investment will occur if your case is resolved via a trial or arbitration. Your attorney can help you plan for each of these stages, and let you know what kind of time commitment you can likely expect based upon the needs of your case.

This is a great question! Although we take great pride in efficiently and effectively representing our clients, you have knowledge about your case and your business that no one else does. Early in your representation, we will work closely with you to determine what facts, information, witnesses, documents, and evidence are important for your case. Because planning a successful litigation strategy requires knowing the ins and outs of every aspect of a case, we often tell our clients that the best thing they can do for their defense is to tell us everything and tell us early. In this way, right out of the gates, you can play a critical role in assisting with your lawsuit. In cases that proceed to discovery, we will coordinate responding to discovery and preparing you for any testimony you may have to give and your participation at trial.

Testimony of a qualified and skilled expert can be the make or break factor in some cases. In others, the expense and technical testimony associated with an expert witness may create more complication than clarify for jurors, and many cases can be successfully defended at trial without an expert. Z&A carefully assesses each case on its merits to determine the optimal course of defense and best use of expert testimony.

We carefully craft strategies for each individual client and case. No two legal problems are the same, and our clients benefit from a carefully tailored representation that is designed to optimize their opportunities in court, in mediation, in business, and in daily life. A good strategy considers not only the client’s goals but the others who will have an influence on the course of their case. Lawsuits often involve numerous complicated factual and legal issues which must be successfully communicated to a mediator, judge, and jury, each of whom present different challenges to litigators and witnesses. Our attorneys are experts in communication with each of these audiences, and hold a robust knowledge of the Colorado federal and state judiciary, as well as its many jury pools. Every litigation strategy is formulated around the unique and specialized communications each client will ultimately require at trial in light of the judge who will hear their case and the jury members who will decide it. At every stage of a case, we look to optimize opportunities for our clients, whether in dispositive pleadings, creative alternative dispute resolution, or incisive discovery.

• Each case has different discovery needs, but in Colorado, each case in federal and state court begins with mandated disclosures between the parties. The requirements in these two jurisdictions differ enough that proper, skilled compliance with the disclosure process is a necessity. Likewise, attentive analysis of an opposing party’s disclosure can lead to discovery of information critical to a case.

• The main portion of the discovery process is usually influenced by the information obtained through these disclosures, and is usually driven by the broader litigation strategy.

• Your Z&A attorneys will carefully analyze the discovery options available to formulate an optimal plan for your specific case.