Law Department Management Blog
Software exists which helps a litigator quantify the likelihood of various decisions and occurrences in a lawsuit and attach to them outcome amounts. Along with the software there are consultants who can advise litigants on decision-tree methodologies (See my post of June 17, 2009: decision tree software with 6 references.)
Even if your legal department does not want to invest that much time and energy, it can still ask outside counsel to lay out a branching assessment of what could happen in the coming months in a lawsuit. To attach budget estimates to those branches goes even farther. To top it off, ask for this analysis to be done within 60 days after a complaint is given to the law firm.