What will this actually cost?
Pick the complexity, check the phases you expect to reach, and get a per-side planning band — phase by phase, with the biggest line items visible. Then the part most calculators skip: what that spend does to your settlement position.
All free tools →The bands are planning figures synthesized from published litigation-cost surveys and fee studies (court filing and service costs, deposition and transcript rates, expert day-rates, and trial-day staffing), organized into the five phases where civil litigation spend actually concentrates. Discovery dominates in most real cases — which the per-phase bars make visible immediately.
They are deliberately wide: real spend varies with venue, counsel rates, and how hard the other side fights. Treat the band as a budget conversation-starter with counsel, not a quote.
The engine readout underneath comes from the vendored Juricratic case model: litigation burn is not just an expense, it is settlement pressure. At heavier mutual spend the model's implied settlement share moves — the same own-burn penalty mechanism (exogenous by default) the full war room exposes as a dial.
- How much does a lawsuit cost?
- For a simple matter that settles early, often five figures per side. A standard business dispute that goes through discovery commonly runs $50,000–$200,000 per side, and complex multi-party litigation with experts routinely exceeds $500,000. Discovery is usually the largest line item.
- Why per side?
- In the American system each side generally pays its own attorneys' fees regardless of outcome (with statutory and contractual exceptions). Your exposure is your own band — and the other side's band is their settlement pressure.
- What drives cost more: complexity or duration?
- They compound. Complexity multiplies the rate of spend (more documents, more depositions, more experts) while duration multiplies how long you pay it. A congested court can make a standard case cost like a complex one purely by stretching discovery.
- How does spending affect settlement?
- Two ways: your remaining costs lower the worst offer you should rationally accept, and the defendant's remaining costs raise the most they should rationally pay. The engine readout quantifies a version of this — mutual burn shifts the model's implied settlement share.
- Are these numbers a quote or prediction?
- Neither. They are editable planning assumptions, and the settlement readout is a simulation artifact of a transparent model. Get actual budgets from counsel; use this to know which questions to ask.
This tool is a simulation artifact, not legal advice, and creates no attorney–client relationship. Every probability-like input is your assumption — a dial, not a prediction. Your inputs never leave your browser. Verify all deadlines and figures against the rules and orders of your court.
This is one dial. Your case has fifty.
Juricratic models your whole matter as a solvable game — every motion, every deadline, every settlement posture — and shows how the picture moves when the assumptions do.
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