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Pre-Suit

PLA 2201Activity 2·13 min read

Why it Matters

Civil disputes are often won or lost before a complaint is ever filed. Before taking a case, a litigation team has to decide two things: whether the facts actually support a recognized legal claim, and whether the client can still bring it or has already run out of time under the statute of limitations. Some claims also carry pre-suit conditions, like Florida’s notice requirement in medical malpractice or the administrative charge an employee must file before suing for federal discrimination, and skipping them can sink a case at the courthouse door. Getting any of this wrong can forfeit a strong claim or expose the firm to sanctions for filing something with no basis, so the pre-suit phase is where good judgment saves clients the most.

Current Context

On January 20, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Berk v. Choy, holding that Delaware’s requirement that a medical malpractice complaint arrive with an expert affidavit of merit attached cannot be enforced in federal court, because Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure already fixes what a plaintiff must say about the merits of a claim at the outset. Justice Barrett wrote for eight members of the Court, and Justice Jackson agreed on the result while locating the conflict in Rules 3 and 12 instead. Florida runs its own version of that screen: Chapter 766 of the Florida Statutes requires a claimant to complete a presuit investigation and to serve a corroborating written medical expert opinion with the notice of intent before a malpractice suit can be filed. Berk did not decide what becomes of Florida’s version, and the lower federal courts will work that out claim by claim. For the triage you do in Part 1, the point is that a condition precedent is not a fixed feature of a claim: whether it binds your client can turn on which courthouse the case is headed for.

Key Concepts

Cause of Action

A cause of action is a set of facts that entitles a party to ask a court for a remedy, such as money damages or an injunction. Whether one exists depends on matching the client’s facts to a claim the law actually recognizes, whether under Florida law or federal law. Identifying the right cause of action is the first move in evaluating any potential case.

Elements of a Claim

Elements are the specific components a plaintiff must prove to win on a given cause of action. A negligence claim, for example, requires duty, breach, causation, and damages, and missing proof on any one of them defeats the claim. Before recommending a case, a litigation team checks whether the facts can support every element.

Statute of Limitations

A statute of limitations sets the deadline for filing a lawsuit, measured from when the claim arose or was discovered. Florida’s periods appear in section 95.11 of the Florida Statutes, while federal claims run on their own statutory deadlines or borrow the state period when Congress is silent. A claim filed after the deadline is usually barred no matter how strong it is, so confirming the limitations period is part of intake.

Conditions Precedent

Conditions precedent are steps a claimant must complete before a lawsuit can properly be filed. Florida requires a pre-suit notice and investigation period in medical malpractice cases, and federal employment discrimination claims require a charge with the EEOC and a right-to-sue letter before going to court. Failing to satisfy a condition precedent can get a case dismissed even when the underlying claim is sound.

Subject-Matter Jurisdiction

Subject-matter jurisdiction is a court’s authority to hear a particular type of case, and it determines whether a claim belongs in state or federal court. Federal courts can hear cases that raise a federal question or that are between citizens of different states where the amount in controversy exceeds the statutory threshold, while most everyday disputes stay in state court. Deciding the correct forum shapes which rules, deadlines, and pre-suit requirements apply.

Client Intake Interview

The client intake interview is the first structured conversation with a prospective client, used to gather the facts and identify the client’s goals so the firm can judge whether it can take the case. A paralegal often conducts or prepares this interview, subject to the ethical limits addressed in Florida Bar Opinion 88-6. Good intake produces the factual record that everything else in the case is built on.

Factual Investigation

Factual investigation is the work of confirming and expanding on the client’s account through documents, records, witnesses, and site inspections. It is not optional diligence: both Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 and Florida’s section 57.105 require that a claim have a reasonable factual and legal basis before it is filed. Thorough investigation is what separates a claim a court will take seriously from one that draws sanctions.

Demand Letter

A demand letter is a formal, pre-suit communication that states the claim and the relief the client wants, backed by the key facts and legal authority, usually with a deadline to respond. It opens settlement negotiations and creates a record that the other side was given a chance to resolve the matter before litigation. Some claims require a demand as a condition precedent, while in others it is simply a strategic first step.

Resources

What to Do

This activity runs you through the pre-suit workflow a litigation paralegal handles before a case is filed. Working from a client’s account of a dispute, you will triage candidate matters, develop a plan for the strongest claim and verify its legal elements against primary sources, and finally draft a demand letter. The goal is to practice the judgment that decides whether a claim is worth pursuing, and to notice where AI speeds the work up and where its output has to be checked against the law.

Part 1: Triage Three Potential Cases

Open a session with the Fact-Pattern Simulator prompt below. It will ask you to choose three types of civil claims from a list and then produce three short narratives, each written in the voice of a prospective client describing a Florida dispute. Read all three the way an intake paralegal would, looking past the emotion in the account for the facts that suggest an actual legal claim. One of the three is designed to be the strongest case, but the prompt will not tell you which.

In your reflection, write a brief triage memo naming the case you would recommend the firm pursue and explaining your reasoning. Weigh the seriousness of the harm and the damages at stake against how provable the claim looks and whether a limitations deadline may already have passed. Consider too whether the matter belongs in state or federal court, since that changes the deadlines and pre-suit steps that apply. There is no single right answer, and the memo is graded on the quality of the judgment rather than the choice.

Part 2: Build a Case-Development Plan and Verify the Elements

Take the single fact pattern you chose as strongest and paste it into the Claim and Element Mapper prompt. It will identify the most viable cause of action, lay out the legal elements you would have to prove, propose intake questions tied to each element, and flag whether the claim belongs in Florida or federal court. Treat this output as a draft to be checked, not an answer key.

Now verify the elements against primary authority. For a Florida claim, compare the AI’s element list to the Section 400 substantive instructions in the Florida Standard Jury Instructions in Civil Cases, which state the elements Florida courts actually use. For a federal claim, confirm the governing standard through Google Scholar or Westlaw and check any procedural rule the AI cites against the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure on Cornell LII. Note in your reflection where the AI was accurate, where it was vague or wrong, and any element or authority it invented.

Part 3: Draft the Demand Letter

Continue with the same fact pattern and run the Demand Letter Drafter prompt. It will first build out a realistic set of facts (dates, parties, communications) and then produce a persuasive demand letter built on that claim, with supporting Florida or federal authority and a deadline to respond.

Before you trust any citation in that letter, run the Citation Verifier prompt on it. AI models routinely produce citations that look real but are not, and a fabricated case in a demand letter destroys credibility and can raise ethical problems. Confirm every cited authority against a primary source, correct or remove anything you cannot verify, and then save the final letter as a Word document.

Part 4: Write and Submit Your Reflection

Write a reflection of 400 to 600 words on the full process. Discuss what it was like to use AI for case evaluation and drafting, and analyze the accuracy of the AI’s legal analysis and the quality of its writing, pointing to specific strengths and weaknesses you saw. Fold in the triage memo from Part 1 and the verification notes from Part 2. Attach the demand letter you saved as a Word document to your forum post.

Include one AI chat link with a 1–2 sentence explanation of what the conversation shows and why you chose to share it.

Suggested AI Prompts

Use these prompts as a starting point, then adjust them to fit your goal. Strong prompting develops through trial, revision, and testing. It’s a foundational skill that grows into more advanced AI work such as context engineering and agent-based workflows.

Fact-Pattern Simulator

You are a fact-pattern simulator for a Florida-based civil litigation course that covers both state and federal claims. First, show me a numbered list of nine types of civil claims that can arise for people and small businesses in Florida, written in plain language a non-lawyer would understand. Include a mix that could end up in either state or federal court, such as contract disputes, property damage, negligence, defamation, landlord-tenant disputes, employment discrimination, consumer protection violations, professional malpractice, and civil rights violations. Ask me to choose exactly three. Once I choose, write three separate, realistic fact patterns, one for each claim I picked, each told in the first person as if a prospective client were describing their situation in a short written account to a law firm. Set every fact pattern in a real Florida location, give each three to five paragraphs with enough concrete detail to suggest more than one legal issue, and use no legal jargon or statute names. Make one of the three clearly the strongest case based on the seriousness of the harm, the damages at stake, or how solid the claim looks, but do not tell me which one it is. Label them Fact Pattern #1, #2, and #3 with clear spacing. Then ask me which case I would recommend the firm pursue and to explain my reasoning.

This prompt combines role assignment with a deliberate withholding move: by refusing to flag which case is strongest, it forces you to do the triage yourself instead of deferring to the model. Asking for a client-voice narrative rather than a tidy legal summary also keeps the issue-spotting work on your side.

Claim and Element Mapper

I’m a college student in a Civil Litigation course that covers Florida and federal practice. Act as a senior litigation paralegal at a Florida firm. Start by asking me to paste a fact pattern for a possible civil case. Once I paste it, evaluate the causes of action the facts could support under Florida or federal law, identify the single strongest and most viable claim, and explain briefly why it offers the clearest path to recovery. State whether that claim would normally be filed in Florida state court or federal court, and why. Then build a Case-Development Checklist in two parts. Part one lists the legal elements of that primary claim using correct terminology, and cites the controlling Florida or federal authority for each element where you can, or names the standard formulation if you cannot. Part two gives a sequenced set of intake questions an attorney or paralegal should ask the client to gather facts supporting or undercutting each element, with a one-line note after each question explaining what it is meant to elicit and which element it connects to. Keep the tone professional and precise. When you finish, tell me plainly which elements or citations you are least confident about so I know where to verify, and ask whether I want to explore other possible claims from the same facts.

Asking for a two-part checklist is structured output: it forces the model to cover every element and tie each intake question back to what it must prove, rather than giving a loose summary. The closing request to name its least-confident points turns the model’s own uncertainty into a verification to-do list.

Demand Letter Drafter

I’m a college student in a Civil Litigation course studying pre-suit practice and demand letters in Florida and federal civil matters. Act as a Florida litigation professional and help me draft a demand letter for a client. First, ask me to paste a fact pattern describing a civil dispute. Once I paste it, generate a realistic and internally consistent set of specific facts the dispute would likely involve, such as dates, the parties, key events, communications between them, and relevant documents, so the letter reads like it came from a real file. Then use those facts to draft a professional, persuasive demand letter. The letter should open with a factual narrative of the dispute, identify the legal claim or claims, and cite specific Florida or federal authority that supports the client’s position. It should then make a firm but reasonable demand for compensation or other relief, recognizing that an opening demand usually aims higher than the expected settlement, and close with a response deadline and an invitation to resolve the matter before suit. After the draft, list every legal authority you cited in it, each on its own line, so I can verify them, and ask whether I want to revise the facts, adjust the tone, or change the citations.

Having the model build a concrete fact set before it drafts is a decomposition move, since a letter written from specific facts is sharper than one written from a vague instruction. Asking it to list its citations at the end sets up the next step, because those are exactly the claims you cannot take on faith.

Citation Verifier

I am going to paste a demand letter that an AI drafted, and I need to check its legal citations before anyone relies on it. Act as a careful verifier, not a cheerleader. Pull out every legal authority the letter cites, whether it is a Florida statute, a federal rule, or a case, and list them in a table with three columns: the citation as written, what the letter claims it stands for, and what I should check to confirm it. For each one, tell me exactly where to verify it: the Florida Statutes site for a Florida statute, Cornell LII for a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure, or Google Scholar for a case. Flag any citation that looks doubtful, internally inconsistent, or too convenient for the argument, and say why. Do not assume a citation is correct because it is formatted properly. At the end, remind me that you may have missed a fabricated citation and that I am responsible for confirming each one against the primary source myself.

This is the responsible-use step. Casting the model as a skeptical verifier and telling it not to trust clean formatting pushes against its habit of validating its own earlier output, and routing each citation to a named primary source builds the check into your workflow instead of leaving it to trust.

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