familiar with as much information as you can, before making up your mind, is a good one. Once the mind is made up, many people find that it is much harder to change the view that has been formed initially, in the light of fresh information, than it would have been to reach a different decision in the first instance. There is good reason for this. Once you have actually launched something in public, it is vital that you are not put off your stride by every fresh piece of intelligence, much of which may be false, or at any rate misleading. Such indecision is debilitating for oneself; it is disheartening for others. So one gets into the habit of thinking that once a decision is reached, one should stick to it; besides first thoughts are often better than second thoughts. If time permits, it is that first decision which should be taken at leisure.
However, to reach that first decision it is necessary to form at least a provisional view of the prospects of success. I have often found it helpful in a civil claim to draft a statement of claim, and in a projected prosecution to draft an opening, in order to get an idea of how it would sound in public. If one does not do this, then one has to rely simply on professional instinct in making up one's mind; whilst I do not decry this, reasoned argument must also be a help. Yet the very process of preparing a draft claim or a draft opening to some extent forms a provisional view in the mind. This may help to clarify the legal strengths and weaknesses, but it may fog the moral decision whether to advise that a case be brought at all. This is inevitable; it is part of human nature, and the way the human mind has been created. So the ability to sit back and relax the mind, again and again, so as to rethink the decision from first principles, is always welcome, and sometimes vital. The only drawback is that one may become too slow in making up one's mind in the first place. The pace of hum-drum professional life may not allow the time one needs to think things through.
Nor is it always easy to see which are the important factors in a case.