By: Shahrokh Sheik
I hear it all the time from prospective litigation clients: “I want a bulldog.” “Are you a bulldog?”
What this presumably means is, “I want someone who will fight back hard, be aggressive and threatening, and put the other side on their heels.” That is understandable. Especially when the stakes are high, or emotions are high, or opposing counsel made aggressive demands, or all of the foregoing… In this situation, the impulse is to fight back hard and loud.
The problem is that litigation (and business deals, for that matter) isn’t necessarily a bar fight. It’s a campaign. And campaigns are won with strategy, diligence, and disciplined execution—not with noise.
A “bulldog” approach often includes scorched-earth-type tactics: abrasive communications, reflexive posturing, non-meritorious positions, motion practice for sport, and discovery designed to drown the other side. Sure, it can feel satisfying in the moment. But it rarely moves the needle toward your end goal—and it almost always inflates the bill.
It also burns credibility with the only audience that ultimately matters: the judge (and sometimes the jury). Courts see through performative aggression. Opposing counsel responds in kind. And suddenly the dispute isn’t about resolving the actual issues—it’s about managing the chaos.
A “strategist” starts in a different place: What’s the client’s objective?
What does “winning” actually mean here—money, an injunction, stopping the bleed, forcing a deal, protecting a brand, avoiding reputational fallout, or simply getting back to running the business? From there, you build a plan that’s proportional to the stakes: targeted discovery, realistic liability and damages theories, tactics to facilitate resolution from a place of strength / leverage, etc. Discovery becomes targeted—not maximal. Motions are filed when they create leverage or narrow issues—not because “we should do something.” And throughout the case, the strategy gets refined as facts develop, pressure points emerge, and resolution opportunities appear.
Further, we are seeing an industry transition- the emergence of AI and other legal tech that is evening the playing field for all attorneys / all firms. The old “bury them in paper” model is getting less effective by the day. AI and modern legal tech are increasingly amazing at the tedious work—sorting, summarizing, searching, clustering, and making sense of large volumes of
documents and discovery.
So the bulldog’s favorite weapon (volume) is becoming moot. If both sides can process mountains of information faster and cheaper, the advantage shifts back to what it should be: judgment, narrative, and precision. The best use of AI isn’t to escalate war—it’s to eliminate waste and get to the handful of facts that decide the case.
So if you’re hiring litigation counsel (or deciding how to run a dispute), ask questions that reveal whether you’re getting a bulldog or a strategist: What’s the endgame? What’s the plan for the first 30–60 days? What are the decision points that change strategy? How do you keep the approach proportional to the stakes? How do you use technology to cut busy work, so the budget goes to what matters?
Bulldogs are great pets, but in litigation, they mostly chew through budgets, make a lot of noise, and tend to isolate the Judge and opposing counsel to no gain. Strategists on the other hand are leaders with one focus- win the campaign.