pre-motion-andrew-bird
Pre-Motion — adversarial premortem for UK litigation
You think you've built the strongest version of your case. Pre-Motion runs it through a structured adversarial pipeline to find where it actually loses — the procedural, substantive, evidentiary, and strategic failure modes opposing counsel will pull on first. The opposite of confirmation bias, by design.
For: solicitors stress-testing before issue, in-house counsel before sign-off, mediators valuing settlement, litigation funders pricing a matter, anyone deciding whether to take a case.
How it runs
Four passes over the matter. Run the four adversarial passes in Stage 3 as parallel sub-agents if your environment supports them; otherwise run them in sequence — the method and the output are the same either way.
- Optimistic baseline. Build the strongest version of the case the evidence supports. This is the foil for everything that follows.
- Evidence inspection. Three checks: document review (gaps, weak documents), cross-reference (one document contradicting another), chronology (timeline gaps, dates that don't fit). Produce evidence flags with a severity each.
- Premortem adversary. Four adversarial passes, one per failure category below. Give each the same frame: "It is [trial date + 1 year]. This case has been LOST. Walk back — what in your category caused the loss?" Produce ranked failure scenarios per category.
- Synthesis. Diff the optimistic baseline against the adversarial findings. Produce the brief.
--depth=fast runs a single combined adversarial pass for a quick read; --depth=thorough runs all four passes in full.