Valuation is a prerequisite for thoughtful decision-making. The old management adage?you can?t manage what you don?t measure?remains true today. In business, sound decision-making involves placing reasonable values on assets and strategies to identify the best decisions among competing, but uncertain, choices. While valuation has long been used by businesses to improve decisions, it has been slow to develop as a wide-ranging decision tool in the legal setting. As a result, valuation principles are too often ignored or poorly implemented in legal settings. Valuation should be a fundamental skill possessed by most lawyers. Consider just a few of the legal settings that require valuation to make properly informed decisions: ? Developing remedies in the litigation context. ? Making sue-or-settle decisions. ? Crafting effective laws and regulations. ? Determining how much to spend on legal services. ? Developing and executing business strategies that are based on legal rights (such as intellectual property strategies). ? Evaluating the success or failure of negotiations. In each of these contexts, the decision-maker must make a value judgment (the option chosen is better than options not chosen), whether the decision-maker appreciates it or not. For example, when a client decides to settle a lawsuit, she has valued the settlement alternative higher than the litigation alternative. Therefore, the choice is not whether to employ a valuation analysis. Rather, the choice is whether to employ an intelligent valuation analysis that helps inform the decision or to employ a jumbled process that ignores such valuable information. One reason (and probably the most powerful reason) for the slow development of valuation analysis in the legal setting is the common misperception that valuation is too difficult. This course will seek to disprove that notion. This course will teach students how to apply valuation principles in their future legal practice and become more effective lawyers. Strong math skills are not required. We will not employ any mathematical concepts beyond what is required in a 6th grade math class.