Readiness is not a feeling about the case. It is a per-issue state: what is proven, what is disputed, what is still open, and what is waiting on a person.
The case has to agree with itself.
By the hearing, the pleadings, the witness statements, the expert reports, the chronology, and the schedules all state a position on the same events. Where they disagree, the disagreement will be found in cross-examination rather than in review.
Expert evidence carries its own duties. The obligations set out in The Ikarian Reefer, independence, stated assumptions, and disclosure of matters outside expertise, remain the standard reference for how an expert's role is understood.
In arbitration the same discipline is imposed procedurally: Scott Schedules narrowing quantum issues, Redfern Schedules governing document production, joint expert statements isolating what is genuinely in dispute.
The failure mode is almost always the same. A conclusion is carried forward from an earlier draft after the fact supporting it has moved.
How readiness is established.
Issue by issue, not document by document.
State the issues
Reduce the case to the issues that decide it.
Attribute every conclusion
Tie each material conclusion to the record that supports it.
Reconcile the case documents
Test pleadings, statements, reports, and schedules against each other.
Isolate the real disputes
Separate genuine disagreement from unreconciled drafting.
Mark what needs a person
Identify what requires a decision from counsel or an expert before it can close.
What readiness is assessed against.
Everything the case will stand on, tested together rather than in sequence.
Where cases come apart.
Rarely on an unknown document. Usually on an internal contradiction.
A superseded conclusion survives
An earlier finding stays in the report after the underlying date or record changed.
The experts proceed on different facts
Delay and quantum experts working from different chronologies produce reports that cannot both be right.
The adverse case was never built
A theory that has not been argued against is met for the first time in cross-examination.
Open questions are not tracked
Items waiting on a decision from counsel go to the hearing still waiting.
What the Matter Model does with it.
It reports readiness per issue in words rather than as a score, and marks which items are waiting on a person.
It holds the whole case in one current state, so a change to the record shows up in every issue it touches instead of in one document.
Standards and authorities
- National Justice Compania Naviera SA v Prudential Assurance Co Ltd (The Ikarian Reefer) [1993] 2 Lloyd's Rep 68
- IBA Rules on the Taking of Evidence in International Arbitration
General reference on how these disputes are argued. Not legal advice, and not a statement of the law of every jurisdiction or seat.
Related
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