Question Bank – PERSUIT

Question Title	Example Full Question Text
Team & Staffing Questions
Team	Please provide a brief description of the team expected to work on this matter. It is recommended to include a list of the key people expected to work on the matter and any relevant expertise or experience.
Team	Please provide a list of the team members you propose to work on this Matter ("Key Team Members") and briefly describe their: - name, title and role in this Matter, - similar case experience, - % of time you estimate they will spend on this Matter relative to other Key Team Members. In providing your list, please keep in mind our appreciation for and previous successes with legal teams diverse in personal backgrounds as well as in legal and technical experiences. You can include the requested information in a form of an attachment.
Resourcing / Team	Describe how your firm intends to staff and manage the work, with an explanation as to how your approach will minimize costs and maximize value and efficiency. It is recommended to include a list of the key people expected to work on the matter and any relevant expertise or experience. Please include name, bar year, title, role on the matter & estimated % of time expected for each attorney listed. Please include non-attorney staff if appropriate. Company is committed to diversity and inclusion in our workforce. We recognize the importance of legal representation that reflects the diversity of our employees, customers and the communities where we do business. We expect and encourage our outside legal advisors to consider Company’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, and to make good faith efforts to recruit, retain and promote qualified women and minorities. In considering future needs for legal counsel, we prefer our firms reflect our values and commitments to diversity and inclusion.
Staffing/Project Management	Describe how your team intends to staff and manage the work, with an explanation as to how your approach will minimize costs and maximize value and efficiency.
Staffing	Describe how your firm intends to staff and manage the work, with an explanation as to how your approach will minimize costs and maximize value and efficiency. Also include any plans to utilize Local Counsel and how that relationship will be managed.
Background and General Firm Questions
Matter Approach	Based on the information contained in the matter brief above, please provide your initial case assessment and strategy. Is there anything that counsel and Company could do to bring this matter to an early and beneficial solution?
Background	Provide basic background information about you, your firm generally, and any lawyers or support staff that you anticipate in including in this engagement. Please make sure to include first-chair trial experience and any other experience that would be important to this engagement.
Why is your firm uniquely qualified to work on this matter for Company?	N/A
Why your Firm?	Please explain why your firm is better suited than your competitors to take on this matter. Please keep your answer brief, to-the-point, and focused. General statements that any one of your competitors could make are not helpful.
Other Company Matters	Are any of your proposed team members currently working on other Company matters, and will this work interfere in any respect with this project?
Transaction Assessment	Based on the information contained in the Summary section and your knowledge of Company, please provide your initial assessment of the Matter, including any potential issues arising in connection with the Matter and your recommended approach to addressing these issues.
Trial Win Record	Please provide the trial win/loss record of the proposed first chair attorney.
Venue / Jurisdiction / Judge Questions
[Insert] County	Please advise whether you or your firm has handled lawsuits in [insert] or in surrounding venues. If so, please provide a description of the case, where it was located, the judge involved, local/national counsel with whom you worked on the case, a list of all co-defendants and the firms who represented those co-defendants, and the result of the matter (settled, dismissed, summary judgment, etc.). In addition, we are interested in the juror demographics and a summary of the types of biases or preconceptions that jurors in Monterey County are likely to bring to cases such as these. Please provide us any information or insight you may have as to the jury pool in [insert].
Judge	The judge assigned to the pending [MATTER NAME] is [NAME]. Please advise whether you or your firm has handled any matters before Judge [NAME]. If so, please provide a description of the case(s), where it was/they were located, local/national counsel with whom you worked on the case(s), a list of all co-defendants and the firms who represented those co-defendants in the case(s), and the result of the matter (settled, dismissed, summary judgment, etc.).
Transfer of Case	Do you have any relevant experience before the Judge assigned to this matter as well as the [court] that you propose removing this case to, including any court to which you may propose transferring the case.
Experience in Venue	Does your firm and/or members of the proposed team have any experience handling cases in [County/State/Federal] Court in [Location]? If so, please describe for each case the type of case it was, when it was pending, the judge, the magistrate, the client you or your firm represented, and the outcome of the case.
Counties Experience	Please list the counties your firm has experience representing clients with [insert subject matter]. Please also provide a brief description of the relevant experience.
Removal	Please explain your firm's assessment on removing this case to federal district court, and which jurisdiction is most favorable for the Company and why.
Concerns and Strategy Regarding Venue	Please address any issues or concerns you foresee given that the case is located in [location] including staffing and defense of the case.
Assumptions/Exclusion Questions
Pricing Assumptions	Please list the specific assumptions that form the basis for the pricing, schedules and plan for your proposal.
Assumptions	Please list any additional assumptions or tasks that form the basis for your proposed fee.
Exclusions	Please list any limitations or exceptions related to your proposal. These would be things that you DO NOT agree to deliver as part of your proposal/ bid or plan.
DEI Questions
Diversity & Inclusion: Matter Staffing Confirmation	[Company] now require its law firms to provide a diverse staff/team working on matters. For the team proposed above, please confirm with a Yes or No if the assigned staff meets the following: at least 20% of partner time and 30% of billable associate time (including all other billable non-partner staff) comes from females, racially/ethnically diverse professionals or members of the LGBTQ+ community. Your firm is of course encouraged to propose even higher targets when submitting proposals for specific matters.
Diversity & Inclusion: Matter Staffing Rationale	If your assigned matter staff does not meet our diverse staffing requirements, please provide the reason why.
Diversity & Inclusion	We are introducing diverse staffing commitments for our matters. We expect that for this Matter at least 30% of billable associate time and 20% of partner time will be provided by females, racially/ethnically diverse professionals, or members of the LGBTQ+ community. If your Firm does not meet its agreed-upon diverse staffing commitment, we are entitled to withhold (or clawback depending on the dollar value of the remaining unpaid invoice(s)) 15% of the total amount billed over the life of the Matter. Please confirm your acceptance of this term.
Diversity	Please comment about your firm’s diversity program. Identify how you plan to staff the project with diversity as a priority.
Diversity	What percentage of the hours do you expect to be completed by historically underrepresented populations? What percentage of the spend do you expect to be completed by historically underrepresented populations?
Reference Cases	Please demonstrate briefly your expertise in patent litigations as counsel to generics companies, in particular the relevant case/product examples and references.
Diversity	Company prides itself on its diverse workforce and deeply values the diversity that exists among our consumers, customers, and vendors. We are highly committed to diversity and inclusion, and are eager to work with firms that share our goal of recruiting, retaining, and promoting a diverse group of people. Consistent with our emphasis on diversity, we expect your Firm to do whatever it can to offer opportunities to women, minorities, individuals living with disabilities, and covered veterans at all levels within your Firm. We also expect you to assign diverse teams to our matters. As part of your proposal, please provide data that reflects the diversity of your Firm’s attorney workforce, including the percentages of your total U.S. partner and associate ranks comprised of (1) women, (2) minorities, (3) individuals with disabilities and (4) veterans.
Diversity	Diversity is very important to Company at all levels of the engagement. We will consider how your proposed staffing aligns with Company’s values. Please indicate which attorneys identified in Question 1 are from historically underrepresented populations (people of color, women, LGBTQ+, or disabled) and what role they will play. What percentage of the hours do you expect to be completed by historically underrepresented populations? What percentage of the spend do you expect to be completed by historically underrepresented populations? What percentage of origination credit will go to diverse team members? Further, if you pitch a diverse individual, we expect that individual to be staffed on this work.
Matter Type Questions
Personal Injury Chemical Exposure Work	Provide a detailed discussion about what work, if any, your firm has previously done as a regional or national counsel in personal injury chemical exposure cases on behalf of other companies. Include any special expertise you believe your firm has developed in handing such cases over and above that of other top tier firms in this regard. Please include all results, whether you deem them successes or otherwise.
Licensing and Regulatory Matters	Please confirm that you are able to provide advice on licensing or regulators matters in Japan with respect to the handling of radioactive materials. If you are unable to do so, please state as such and whether there are any preferred firms that you would recommend to provide such advice.
Experience - Trademark Applications	How many trademark applications does your firm file on an annual basis?
Prior Company Work	Provide a short description or summary of any prior work that your firm has performed for Company and/or its predecessor companies.
Case Study / Matter Type Experience Questions
Why your Firm?	Please explain why your firm is better suited than your competitors to take on this assignment. Please keep your answer brief, to the point and focused.
Relevant Experience	Please describe the experience of proposed team with respect to similar projects. We are interested in the experience of your proposed team members and not the experience of your firm as a whole.
Representative Trials	Describe at least five representative matters [preferably personal injury cases] that you or your firm has tried to the bench or a jury in the past fifteen (15) years. Please include all results, whether you deem them successes or otherwise.
Worker Exposure	Many of the allegations in the MATTER NAME exposure cases currently pending against Company involve direct exposure while plaintiffs were working on [insert facility]. Please advise whether you or your firm has handled lawsuits involving [insert facility] exposure and for each such lawsuit, provide a description of the case, where it was located, the judge involved, local/national counsel with whom you worked on the case, a list of all co-defendants and the firms who represented those co-defendants, and the result of the matter (settled, dismissed, summary judgment, etc.). In addition, please provide any helpful comments or insights you have gained handling cases involving [insert facility] worker exposures.
Epidemiological Studies	We expect plaintiffs to engage experts who will rely upon epidemiological studies to demonstrate that chlorpyrifos caused the various injuries alleged in these cases. Please advise whether you or your firm has handled lawsuits in which plaintiffs used or attempted to use epidemiological studies to establish causation and, if so, please provide any helpful comments or insights you have gained handling such cases and what tactics, visual or otherwise, you believe help judges and jurors best understand why reference to epidemiological-based studies is not a reliable or accurate method for establishing causation in exposure cases.
IP Experience	How many patent applications does your firm file on an annual basis? Please list by country for 2019
Prior Experience with Class Actions	Please explain why your firm is better suited than your competitors to take on this litigation. Kindly highlight any prior experience your team has with class actions, New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act claims and/or the plaintiff's counsel involved in the litigation.
Cost / Pricing / Value Related
Cost Control Measures	Describe your approach to achieving desired outcomes at appropriate costs (e.g. staffing, processing efficiencies, etc.).
Value Added Services - IP	What value added services / offerings can your firm bring to the table to deliver exceptional results for our company? How does your firm deploy technology (e.g., automated email or billing systems, patent cost estimator, etc.) to create exceptional results and cost savings for Company?
Value Add	Does your firm have any pre-existing processes, technologies, vendor relationships, systems, or other methods that it can leverage to bring value to Company and keep legal costs down?
Strategy / Issue Spotting
Strategy/Approach	Please explain how your Firm would handle [insert main issue] and your recommended strategies and previous/other experience with a similar matter.
Key Risk Factors	Please identify the key risk factors which [COMPANY NAME] faces in this litigation, and how your firm proposes to address each one.
Early Case Resolution	Please provide your recommendations on how to drive case to early resolution.
Strategies for success	Please outline the value you would add to the work carried out by Company and what your strategies for success will be in this case.
Company's Key Obstacles	What are Company's key obstacles?
Causation in Exposure Cases	All of the MATTER NAME exposure cases currently pending against Company involve allegations of chemical exposure causing injury at the cellular level within the human body via several different potential exposure pathways (digestion, inhalation, absorption). Please advise whether you or your firm has handled lawsuits involving human chemical exposure generally, and which exposure pathway or pathways was/were involved. In addition, please provide any helpful comments or insights you have gained handling such cases in the context of exposure and medical/scientific causation. Specifically, what tactics, visual or otherwise, do you believe help judges and jurors best understand complicated, cellular-level arguments?
Role of Co-Defendant Employers	All of the MATTER NAME exposure cases currently pending against Company involve allegations of liability against co-defendant farm operation employers. Please advise whether you or your firm has handled lawsuits in which you had to address the role of [insert type of] operations specifically, or employers generally, in [matter type] cases. Please provide any helpful comments or insights you have gained handling such cases, in particular what tactics work best to help jurors understand that the employers have a meaningful role in ensuring that their workers are not exposed and that their workplace rules are enforced? That argument can be made more difficult because the farming operations are often Company downstream “customers” and overtly pointing the finger at them in terms of liability can cause commercial issues.
Drift/Bystander Exposure	Some of the allegations in the MATTER NAME exposure cases currently pending against Company involve bystander exposure resulting from allegedly off-target herbicide movement or “drift.” Please advise whether you or your firm has handled lawsuits involving bystander “drift” exposures and for each such lawsuit, provide a description of the case, where it was located, the judge involved, local/national counsel with whom you worked on the case, a list of all co-defendants and the firms who represented those co-defendants, and the result of the matter (settled, dismissed, summary judgment, etc.). In addition, please provide any helpful comments or insights you have gained handling cases involving bystander exposures. For example, what advocacy tactics do you find most effective in helping demonstrate the dose-response concept in bystander cases.
300-600 Plaintiffs	Plaintiffs’ counsel have indicated at various times that they have anywhere between 300 and 600 other plaintiffs that they are “vetting.” Presumably, some or all of those plaintiffs will be brought together in a separate filing or added as individual plaintiffs in one-off lawsuits. The current strategy is to continue to allow the cases to be consolidated for discovery only and to try them separately as the court sets the individual trial dates. No trial dates are currently set and the judge before whom the cases are consolidated for discovery purposes does not appear to be in any particular hurry to set a trial date. The next status conference is in [DATE}. The judge could set the first case for trial at that time, probably for a date in 2021. If hundreds of new plaintiffs are added to the case either at one time or over the period of a few months, what recommendations would you have about how to handle them? How would you suggest we approach discovery? Would you suggest that we agree to a bellwether trial schedule?
Evidentiary Tactics to Keep Out Negative Regulatory & Legislative Activity	As noted above, the State of [INSERT] and several other states have issued regulatory decisions and/or legislative actions to, in effect, “ban” [INSERT]. Please provide your views about the effectiveness of an argument that State evidentiary rules bar the introduction STATE regulatory decisions as evidence of product “safety” (or to support an expert opinion) because such regulatory decisions are borne of the precautionary principle and jurors should not be permitted to consider such a decision when determining ultimate “safety” of a product when plaintiffs’ burden of proof at trial requires a “preponderance of the evidence.”
Evidentiary Inference Based Upon Number of Uses	[PRODUCT] is one of the most widely and often used [PRODUCT TYPE] in the history of mankind. What do you think about the argument that the use of [PRODUCT] has been so ubiquitous over the years that if there was a legitimate connection between [PRODUCT] and [ALLEGATION] there would be far more incidents of [ALLEGATION] than there currently are.
Focus Group and Mock Jury	Please provide your thoughts and views about how you would propose to utilize focus groups and/or mock trial projects to help best understand our most effective trial themes and to how best to advocate our case in effective ways. Also, please indicate a jury consulting specialist with which you would propose to work in this case.
Strategies involving early motion practice	This case may be amenable to early dispositive motions practice. Please describe what dispositive motions you believe could be applicable to dismiss all or part of this case and what your proposed timing would be in terms of filing such a motion or motions.
Potential Defenses	After reviewing the complaint, what potential defenses are you able to identify that Company might employ to defeat the allegations in the complaint?
Methodology - Pay Equity Analysis	Please describe your proposed methodology for conducting the pay equity analysis.
Filing of Patent Forms	In your country are there patent forms that must be filed that are complex and require more time and work than the filing of a routine form?
Final Disposition	Provide what you expect to be the final disposition of this matter and why, as well as concerns as to where you believe things could “go off the rails.”
Opposing Counsel Questions
Experience with Opposing Counsel and Jurisdiction	Please describe your experience with the opposing counsel and jurisdiction, especially for similar matters.
Opposing Counsel	There are four different opposing firms in these cases. Please advise whether you or your firm has worked with any of the plaintiffs’ counsel in the past and, if so, please provide a description of the case(s), where it was/they were venued, the particular lawyers with whom you worked, and the result of the case(s).
Experience with Plaintiff's Counsel	Does your firm and/or members of the proposed team have any experience handling cases with or against any of the individuals or firms identified in the attached complaint? If so, describe the context of the relationship and outcome(s) of any such cases.
Plaintiff's Counsel	Describe your experience with plaintiff’s counsel and how that experience would factor into your proposed strategies for this matter.
Local Counsel Questions
Local Counsel	How would your firm/proposed team handle local counsel in this case? Does your firm have an office near enough the venue to enable you to use lawyers from that firm? Does your firm have lawyers licensed to practice in [insert]? Regardless how you answered any of the foregoing questions, would you nevertheless propose that Company engage local counsel in the county or federal district involved and, if so, what firms/lawyers would you recommend?
Secondment Questions
Candidate's Seniority	What is your candidate's level of seniority? (Eg. 6th year litigation associate)
Candidate's Previous Relevant Roles & Experience	Please provide a brief description of your candidate's previous roles/experience and the relevance of those roles/experience in light of the role which we are looking to fill.
Other Relevant Attributes	Are there any other attributes your candidate has, or considerations relevant to your candidate, that you believe have not been adequately addressed in the previous answers that you have provided? If so, please provide a description of those attributes/considerations here.
Education	Law school attended
Start Date/Duration/Location	Please let us know if your candidate is unable to satisfy any of the Start Date/Duration/Location criteria that we have requested, and what alternatives you propose.
Admission to Practice	Is your candidate admitted to practice in the jurisdiction/s that we have requested?
IT Security Questions
IT Security	Describe your firm’s IT security standards and policies to ensure protection of Company information.
POST RFP Questions
Teleconference Availability	4/5/22 after 11:00 am ET (Please provide availability for a 45-minute window with the submission of the proposal). Company will arrange for a 45-minute meeting with the proposed attorneys for the matter during 4/5/22 after 11:00 am ET – the firm’s relationship attorney may join but is neither required nor encouraged to do so.

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