Portfolio Control
How does my litigation portfolio benchmark against the industry?
Updated July 2026
You compare your own case mix, venue mix, and settlement timing against the industry nuclear-verdict curve: 149 verdicts of $10 million or more in 2025, up 239 percent from 44 in 2020, concentrated in a handful of states and case types. The industry data sets the baseline. Your structured portfolio data tells you whether your book sits above or below it.
What is the industry curve you are benchmarking against?
Litigation Sentinel tracking recorded 149 nuclear verdicts of $10 million or more in 2025, totaling $25.1 billion, up from 44 in 2020, a 239 percent increase in five years. Severity concentrates by case type: products liability and auto and trucking each drive roughly a quarter of nuclear verdicts, medical malpractice carries the highest median award. That curve, not last year's internal loss run, is the industry baseline a portfolio should be measured against.
| Case type | Share of nuclear verdicts | Median award |
|---|---|---|
| Products liability | 23.3% | $25M |
| Auto and trucking | 23.2% | $27.5M |
| Medical malpractice | 20.3% | $34M |
| Employment | 12% | $19M |
+239%
Growth in annual nuclear verdicts industry-wide, 2020 to 2025
Litigation Sentinel verdict database
What does 'scoring your portfolio against the curve' mean in practice?
It means mapping your own open and closed matters onto the same dimensions the industry curve is built on: case type, venue, and exposure trajectory. If your book skews toward products or auto and trucking, your baseline risk is already higher than a portfolio weighted toward lower-severity case types, independent of how well any single matter is being run. The curve tells you what to expect from the mix you carry.
- Case-type weighting: what share of your open matters sit in the higher-severity categories the industry curve flags.
- Venue weighting: how much of your book is filed in the states and counties where nuclear verdicts concentrate.
- Trajectory: whether your own nuclear-range matters are trending with the industry's five-year climb or against it.
- Cycle time: whether your matters resolve faster or slower than the drift pattern behind most nuclear outcomes.
Why is case-type and venue mix the right lens instead of raw counts?
Because raw counts punish size, not risk. A portfolio with more matters is not automatically worse than a smaller one; a smaller portfolio concentrated in high-severity case types and top-tier venues can carry more real exposure. The industry curve is built the same way, by case type and by state, precisely so a portfolio of any size can be benchmarked on composition rather than volume alone.
This is also why a single bad verdict should not be read as your whole portfolio underperforming, and a quiet year should not be read as your portfolio being safe. Severity is lumpy even at the industry level, national combined damages fell from $31.3 billion in 2024 to $25.1 billion in 2025 while frequency kept climbing, so the benchmark that holds up is composition and trajectory, not any single year's total.
How does CaseGlide turn this into a portfolio-level benchmark?
CaseGlide structures the status reports your defense counsel already send into a scored, current file for every open matter, then rolls those up by case type, venue, and exposure. That gives you the same dimensions the industry curve is measured on, built from your own book, so you can see where your portfolio sits relative to the industry pattern instead of relying on a stale annual comparison.
- Structure every open matter's case type, venue, and exposure from defense counsel's own reporting.
- Roll the structured data up to the portfolio level, the same dimensions the industry curve tracks.
- Compare your case-type and venue weighting against the published industry concentration.
- Flag the matters that combine a high-severity case type with a top-tier venue for earlier oversight.
This does not predict what any of your cases will resolve for. CaseGlide does not score litigation risk or forecast verdicts. It gives a GC or CCO a factual read on how their book's composition compares to the industry pattern, so oversight and reserves are weighted toward where the industry data says severity actually concentrates.
Common questions
What is the industry baseline I should compare my portfolio to?
The clearest published baseline is the nuclear-verdict curve itself: 149 verdicts of $10 million or more industry-wide in 2025, up 239 percent from 44 in 2020, with products liability and auto and trucking each accounting for roughly a quarter of that total and medical malpractice carrying the highest median award at $34 million. A CCO or GC can use that as the reference point for two questions. First, does my portfolio's case-type mix carry more or less baseline severity than the industry pattern? Second, is my venue exposure concentrated in the states, led by California, Florida, Texas, Georgia, and New York, where nuclear verdicts cluster? Those two answers matter more than comparing your raw verdict count to the industry total, since portfolio size varies too much for a raw count to mean anything on its own.
See the full growth-rate data→Can CaseGlide tell me if my portfolio is better or worse than a competitor's?
No, and be skeptical of anyone who claims to have competitor-level litigation portfolio data, since individual books are not publicly tracked at that granularity. What CaseGlide can do is benchmark your portfolio against the published industry pattern, the nuclear-verdict curve by case type, venue, and year, which is drawn from public verdict tracking, not proprietary competitor data. That comparison tells you whether your composition carries more or less baseline severity than the industry as a whole, which is the useful question. A head-to-head against a named competitor is not a claim this data, or any vendor's, can honestly support.
Does benchmarking against the curve mean CaseGlide predicts my verdict risk?
No. Benchmarking is a comparison of composition, what case types and venues your open matters sit in, against a published industry pattern. It is not a forecast of what any specific case will do at trial or settlement. CaseGlide does not predict litigation outcomes or score individual case risk. What it provides is a structured, current view of your own portfolio's case-type and venue mix, so a GC or CCO can see where that mix sits relative to where the industry data says severity actually concentrates, and weight oversight accordingly.
How to mitigate nuclear-verdict exposure→How often should a legal or claims leader re-run this benchmark?
At least annually, since the industry curve itself moves, nuclear verdict frequency has climbed every year since 2020, and any single year's comparison can understate where the baseline is heading. It is also worth re-running after a material shift in your own book, a new product line, an acquisition, or entry into a higher-verdict state, since those events change your case-type and venue mix independent of anything the industry is doing. Because CaseGlide keeps every open matter's case type, venue, and exposure current as defense counsel reports come in, the underlying portfolio data does not need a special pull. Re-running the comparison is a matter of rolling up the current file against the latest published industry figures.
Spot patterns across your own portfolio→CaseGlide is the litigation intelligence platform for Fortune 500 legal departments and insurance claims organizations. It structures live litigation data from defense counsel into executive decisions: reducing defense spend, settling the right cases sooner, and shrinking litigated claim volume.
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