Years may pass without satisfaction to either party. Even litigators who profit from protracted litigation feel uncomfortable billing their clients the substantial amounts that are frequently incurred. In addition to legal fees, are costs of experts, document reproduction, and the indirect costs of parties and witnesses leaving work to attend depositions, hearings or interviews with counsel. Interminable litigation causes disruption for the parties, who must assist in discovery, attend depositions and prepare for trial. Knowledge of the pendency of a dispute creates a feeling of lack of resolution which can be unsettling to individual parties and disruptive in the workplace.
Matters litigated in court often find a second courtroom in the press.
Even without reporting in journals, information disclosed in court is open to the public forever. Litigation augments adverse postures. Once the die is cast, the parties' counsel strive to gather facts designed to show the strengths of their side and the weaknesses of the other. Lack of Control. Judges applying set rules, and juries applying their own perspectives to those facts permitted into evidence, determine the outcome of cases.