Strategy derives from the Greek word στρατηγός “strategos” which more or less translates to general, as in commander of an army (though the Greek equivalent had vast civil powers). It is on a bigger picture level than operations or tactics, but not as all-encompassing as “grand strategy.”
For the most part, it is not taught in law school, at least not as a subject in and of itself. Yet it is part of the basic curriculum for all modern military officers.
Money tends to dominate civil litigation strategy. The party with the most money often takes on an attrition strategy—the kind where you see motions challenging everything from the service of the summons to pages of boilerplate objections in form interrogatory responses. Ultimately, as in warfare, attrition can be defeated by maneuver, especially if at the end of the day you have dominant facts on your side. So, giving battle early on favors the moneyed party, giving battle later favors the factually superior party (not at all necessarily different).
As most of us implicitly know, this situation is altered a lot by attorneys’ fees cases, where the risk of joining battle can be almost entirely borne by one side and even a blitzkrieg of attrition litigation at the beginning can backfire.
There are books out there such as Lawyer’s Poker—a bit more fashionable, but the analogy doesn’t really hold. Poker is almost entirely tactical, even if you can learn a lot about psychological tactics. I’ve also seen Sun Tzu on more than one attorney’s bookshelf. There are some important maxims in there, but it is more difficult to apply by analogy to litigation than manuals on set piece battles involving field armies and Sun Tzu is not an analytical work.
Here’s a list of books on strategy:
- The Strategikon by Emperor Maurikios of Byzantium
- The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
- On War by Carl Von Klausewitz
- The Art of War (Not Sun Tzu) by Jomini
- Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace by Edward Luttwak
- The U.S. Army Leadership Field Manual
- for the example nonpareil of relational maneuver, read about the Emperor Herakleios who took his field army deep into enemy territory leaving the entire empire unguarded, Constantinople besieged by Avars on one side and the Persians on the other. Ultimately his fast field army utterly destroyed the Sassanid Persian Empire at the Battle of Nineveh, which had just conquered the Levant, Palestine, and Egypt. (As an aside, the destruction of Sassanid Persia and the ruin of war in Byzantium allowed one of the major turning points in history, one very relevant to this day: the Arab conquests.) Relational maneuver is something to think about for those underdogs out there.
There is a book I have not read called Litigation is War that purports to apply Clausewitz to litigation—but what if that’s not you? Sample a variety of primary sources.
Also, as far as games go, chess is infinitely superior to poker because it combines strategy, operations, tactics, and, despite what people think it is hugely psychological (even through a computer).
The kernel of wisdom in all of these pieces is that you must know yourself. Not your boss or your client or your firm—you have to know what your own strengths and weaknesses are first. As someone once put it, you go to war with the army you’ve got (not the one you wish you had).
