When it comes to performing some of the most complex medical procedures on the planet, most surgeons employ a pretty simple tool: A checklist.

That same tool can prove useful in the early stages of litigation according to Andrew Lillie and Mark Gibson, a partner and counsel respectively in the Denver office of Holland & Hart. In a web presentation Tuesday sponsored by the National Institute of Trial Advocacy, Lillie and Gibson ran through a string of pretrial tools they use in the cases including fact timelines, legal outlines and proof charts. But they spent most of their time walking through the following items on the checklist they walk through in the early stages of handling a litigation matter.

Do I or Don’t I?