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Briefings for Corporate Directors:
The Annual Guide to State Legal Climates
Prepared for Directorship Magazine
by Steve Hantler, Chairman,
American Justice Partnership
and
AJP's State Partners
Directorship magazine
and
www.directorship.com,
both of which are widely read by a majority of
Fortune 500 boards, invited AJP to prepare a 12-page
Guide profiling
the political, legislative and judicial dynamics that create the
current and future liability risks in each state. Click on the
article to download a free copy.
 "Board
directors need to understand which states have created predatory
liability laws that will ensnare their companies in costly and
protracted litigation," says Jeff Cunningham, Publisher of
Directorship magazine. "Directors, on behalf of
shareholders, need to make good decisions about in which states to
expand operations and increase employment. We asked Steve Hantler to
partner with us on the Guide because through AJP he has the best
network of in-state Partners who are the experts on their respective
state legal climates."
High-level Legal Risk Analysis for
Decision-Makers
"Our goal for the Guide is to provide board directors
and other company decision-makers with a high-level understanding of
risks arising because of the legal climate in each state," says
Steve Hantler, Chairman of
the American Justice Partnership. "While directors will
need more detailed information before making major decisions about
where to site facilities, this Guide provides an expert summary of
the environment in all the states."
Each state profile incorporates several types of
input. The starting point was an analysis published in 2006 by
the
Pacific Research Institute (PRI) of 39 types of empirical state
performance data ranging from insurance loss ratios to the
provisions of a state's civil justice rules and procedures. Working
with PRI, Hantler then developed a second weighted index
specifically to highlight strengths or weaknesses in the states'
current legal system to examine further, including whether the state
supreme court takes an activist rather than "rule of law" approach
to decisions.
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Steve Hantler (left) with West Virginia Governor
Joe Manchin (D) |
Next, Hantler worked with AJP Partners in the
states to develop an assessment of the recent and
current political power structure and the priorities
of the state legislature, governor, attorney general and supreme
court. This included an assessment of the possible impact of
upcoming legislation and elections to identify developments that
might cause the legal climate to change.
With this substantive baseline, Hantler then
considered the results of the
2007 Harris Survey conducted for the
Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) on the recent experiences of 1,599
corporate litigators in managing cases in the states. The Harris
Survey ranking for each state is reported.
"The ongoing studies by PRI and ILR both provide
vital insights about the litigation risk environment in the states,"
says Hantler. "Each study reveals different aspects of how the
states' civil justice systems are performing in their mission of
delivering an efficient and fair forum to adjudicate disputes. The
ILR survey provides a real-world report card of the experiences of
corporate litigators, while the PRI study documents a range of
specific economic outputs that result from how the civil justice
systems are functioning."
 To develop rankings that take all of this qualitative
and empirical data into account, Hantler created a composite index
based on scores from the PRI and Harris studies as well as the
conclusions from the state assessments, with an intentional bias in
favor of those states that have "rule of law" supreme courts. The
resulting composite score was used to rank the state from best to worst.
"After studying all the data and analyzing all the
rankings done by others, I believe the most comprehensive way to
understand the relative legal climate of a state is to bring all the data together into one composite
ranking," says Hantler. "The composite scorecard approach for
this Guide ensures that the rankings are based on the widest range
of factors that are truly salient to the legal climate in which
companies have to manage their legal risks."
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