Single-event dockets.
Portfolio diversification, by design.

A firm or fund building a plaintiff-side docket is solving a portfolio-construction problem, not a marketing problem. Two structural risks have to be managed alongside the merits of any individual docket.

Concentration risk. Capital concentrated in a single mass tort docket exposes the partner to that docket’s outcome in full. A bellwether that goes badly, a Daubert ruling that narrows the class, a settlement that prices below underwriting — any of these can impair returns on a position that looked well-modeled going in. Diversification across unrelated dockets reduces correlated exposure.

Duration risk. The duration of mass tort resolutions has crept longer. Dockets that were expected to resolve in three to five years are now running seven, eight, ten. Capital locked in those positions is capital not earning, compounding, or being redeployed. Single-event work resolves on a meaningfully shorter timeline — eighteen to thirty-six months in many categories — which gives partners a way to shorten weighted average duration without giving up plaintiff-side return profile.

Building diversified positions across single-event categories alongside mass tort dockets is how funds and firms construct case banks that perform reliably across cycles. That construction work is what we have been running with partners for twenty-five years. The framing is sharper now; the underlying capability is the same one we have been operating since the first mass torts of the century.

Single-event dockets run on the same operating spine as our mass tort work. Discovery work pressure-tests whether a category is viable for the partner’s portfolio and at what acquisition cost. Acquisition campaigns run through the same media and audience-modeling capability we deploy on mass tort. Screening runs through Select Justice intake, with category-specialist training adjusted for whatever the case type demands. And the post-retainer client relationship continues through docket management on PowerEsq.

The mechanics are the same. The differences are scale and cadence. Single-event campaigns operate on smaller monthly retention targets per category than a major mass tort, but across a wider set of categories simultaneously. The intake conversations are different — a sexual abuse case requires different specialist training than a slip-and-fall — and the case-tier criteria the firm applies vary by practice area. PowerEsq is the connective tissue: one platform, one claimant record, one operating discipline across whatever mix of mass tort and single-event work the partner is running.

Most partners running single-event work with us are running it alongside mass tort positions, not instead of them. The portfolio construction the work is built around assumes both layers present. We operate both layers from the same shop.