These ideas are useful only when they are applied deliberately. The steps below show how an attorney can put each of them to work in an ordinary matter.

Assess the position before moving. Before choosing a plan, a chess player takes stock of material, king safety, and the structure of the position. At the outset of a matter, an attorney can do the same: identify the elements of each claim and defense, who bears the burden on each, the governing standard, and the controlling authority. Every later decision rests on that assessment.

Control the center. Identify the two or three issues on which the matter will actually turn, and direct discovery, motion practice, and witness preparation toward them. Arguments that do not bear on those issues tend to dilute the ones that do.

Develop before attacking. Bring every resource into play before the decisive moment: preserve the evidence, calendar every deadline, gather the documents, retain experts early, and settle the theory of the case. A motion filed before that groundwork is done is an attack made with undeveloped pieces.

Keep the king safe. The client’s position is the king. Guard against the exposures that can end a matter regardless of its merits: a missed deadline, a waived privilege, lost evidence, an unpreserved objection, or a position that will not survive scrutiny.

Look for forks. Before drafting a question, a request, or a filing, ask whether it can serve more than one purpose: a deposition question that both establishes an element and tests credibility, or a motion that both narrows the issues and frames the evidence for trial.

Use pins. Commit the opposing side to its positions early, through requests for admission, interrogatory answers, and deposition testimony. A party that has committed to a fact on the record cannot easily move away from it later without cost.

Watch for skewers. Press the most important point first. When the other side moves to protect it, a weaker position behind it is often left exposed. The same test applies in reverse: an attorney can ask whether the client’s strongest point, once attacked, would expose something behind it.

Create zugzwang where the rules allow it. Structure the choices so that each option open to the other side carries a cost: a well-timed settlement offer, a narrowly drawn request for admission, or a motion that requires the opposing party either to concede a point or to come forward with evidence it may not have.

Calculate, then commit. For each candidate course of action, consider the other side’s best response, not its most convenient one, and choose the line that still holds after that response.

Review the game afterward. Chess players study their finished games to find the moments where the result turned. Reviewing a closed matter the same way (what worked, what did not, and why) builds the pattern recognition described at the top of this page.