Early case assessment is the highest-return work a litigator does and the work most often skipped under the pressure to react. This article builds a comprehensive framework for assessing a civil lawsuit, following a hypothetical defendant from the day a dispute surfaces through judgment and appeal. It takes each cause of action apart element by element under the governing burden and standard of proof, separates liability from damages, and runs the three gatekeeping questions—personal jurisdiction, limitations, and collectibility—that quietly decide a surprising number of cases before the merits are ever reached. It then converts judgment into a defensible number using decision trees and expected value, weighs the fee structures and ethics rules (Model Rules 1.2, 1.5, and 1.7) that govern the engagement, and maps the modern terrain of proportional e-discovery, technology-assisted review, predictive analytics, and third-party litigation funding. The organizing idea is that assessment does not merely predict outcomes; done well, it shapes them.