In the context of a longstanding commercial dispute, Herminius was commissioned by one of the protagonists to establish who was running the opponents’ strategy, to map out the attitudes within the opponents’ leadership towards the dispute, and to gauge whether compromise was possible. We found that final responsibility for the dispute lay with the Chairman. Despite the presence of “hawks”, “pragmatists” and “doves” on the board, there was a consensus that drawing out the legal battle over the trademark made commercial sense, even though recent rulings had gone against the competitor. As a result, our client shelved efforts to reach and out-of-court settlement for the foreseeable future, focusing all its resources instead on litigation, which was steadily going in its favour. (For the avoidance of doubt, at no point did Herminius seek access to or obtain legally privileged insights.)