Discretion is the better part of valor...and it is also a big part of a qui tam practice. In the last 18 months, there have a been a number of huge recoveries, including several settlements of more than one billion dollars.  As a result, many lawyers have started to take an interest in qui tam practice and in false claims act litigation.  This is a good thing, in my humble opinion (and indeed generating interest in qui tam in the legal community is one of the reasons I started this blog).   Simply put, I think the more lawyers there are with an interest in qui tam (or any other area of practice for that matter) the more business there is out there for all of us, but that is a different topic for a different day. This uptick in interest in the qui tam provisions of the federal False Claims Act and the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (among other state false claims statutes) has caused a great many folks to try thier hand at evaluating qui tam cases.  Today I want to talk about how I size up a potential qui tam case, and the types of things I look for.  I think that proper screening of qui tam cases is crucial, and any government lawyer will tell you that the better you can screen the cases, the more likely you are to make the government interested in your case. Let me also say that this is not a