This article is written for the lay-person (non-lawyer) who wants to better understand how a lawsuit and trial actually work in practice, as well as for young litigators and non-litigator attorneys who want to do the same thing.

Too many practice guides and handbooks on litigation procedure and trial work are hopelessly complicated and lengthy, making them useful to the practitioner but unhelpful or pointless for the casual observer.

In this article, I will try to give a general overview of what actually happens in lawsuit from the time it is started until it is "finished" (i.e., adjudicated to conclusion in the court of first instance, with all ensuing appeals exhausted or waived).

If you want the labyrinth details, I refer you at once to the many excellent practice guides. Since I practice law in San Diego, my own favorites for this purpose are the Rutter Group Guides to pre-trial procedure and trial procedure in both the California and federal court systems.

But please continue reading if what you seek instead is an informative overview with various tips and pointers from a battle-scarred litigator, along with a smattering of colorful, illustrative examples.

What Is a Lawsuit?

If two or more legal persons become embroiled in a dispute that they cannot resolve on their own, one or more of them may decide that the dispute can be resolved only by means of a lawsuit. A lawsuit is a legal proceeding by which one or more parties asks a court of law to give specified relief because of legal wrongs that another party or parties have allegedly committed.

More exactly, a lawsuit is a legal proceeding undertaken to redress an alleged legal wrong that is brought by one or more plaintiffs against one or more defendants in a court that wields jurisdiction over the litigants and over the subject-matter of the controversy. Once the lawsuit is properly begun, the Court has jurisdiction over the parties and over their dispute, and it therefore has the power to resolve the controversy by issuing interim orders and eventually a final judgment, which bind the parties and can be enforced against them.

This is no joking matter. If Mr. Smith obtains, say, a judgment for $85,000 against Mr. Jones, the judgment will accrue interest at 10% per year and can be renewed every ten years. All the while, Mr. Smith can try to enforce the judgment by recording it as a lien against real property that Mr. Jones owns, by levying money that Mr. Jones holds in his bank accounts, by garnishing his wages, by summoning him and his colleagues to "judgment-debtor" exams at which they are examined about Mr. Jones' financial dealings, by sending a sheriff into Mr. Jones' shop to collect funds paid by his customers, and so on and so forth.

If the judgment includes an injunction that permanently forbids Mr. Jones to engage in a certain activity, then Mr. Jones can be fined and sent to jail for contempt of court every time he engages in the proscribed activity. If the lawsuit is a criminal prosecution brought by a public prosecutor (as opposed to a civil prosecution brought by a private litigant), the accused can be sent to jail or even ordered to forfeit his life. Lawsuits matter, and sometimes the stakes are very high.

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