by Tom Stilp JD, MBA/MM, LLM, MSC, DBA, February 5th, 2026
Physicist Leonard Mlodinow retells a story of a man who won the Spanish lottery. The key number was “48” on the lottery ticket. Denying it was luck, the man explained how he dreamed of the number seven (7) for seven (7) nights in a row, and came up with “7 x 7 = 48” (Mlodinow, 2008).
Apart from games of chance like the Spanish lottery, human beings are not well-suited to distinguish random events from predictable events (Mlodinow, 2008). The reference to the drunkard’s walk is explained by statistics Professor, George Ehrhardt, letting us know the walk is not random, although it appears that way.
We can accurately predict how a sailor is likely to end up in the middle of a pier, with equal chances of stumbling left and right; using a normal distribution, with a regression to the mean (average or center), there is a lower probability of the sailor walking further from the center and falling into the water (Ehrhardt, 2013). In other words, where the sailor winds up on the pier can be predicted – it is not guesswork.
What does all this have to do with the law and lawsuits?
Some lawyers state that litigation is a “roll of the dice,” or “a crap shoot.” Others liken a trial to a “black box” where evidence goes in one side, and a decision comes out the other side, without any knowledge of what happens in between.
This is nonsense. We have taken over 150 cases to trial. What appears to be random to the untrained eye, a good lawyer is able to identify, explain and quantify discrete events to remove uncertainty for clients.
Unlike the Spanish lottery where random events dominate the game of chance, litigation is not a mystery to experienced counsel. Clients should not rely on incantations, superstitions, or throw their hands up as if their business dispute is really a roll of the dice.
References
Ehrhardt, G. (2013). The not-so-random drunkard’s walk. Journal of Stat. Education, 21(2), 1-8.
Mlodinow, L. (2008). The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives. New York, New York: Pantheon Books.
