It’s become an annual tradition for Litigation Daily to query Big Law leaders in the run-up to the holidays about trends they’re looking out for in the year ahead. Indeed, you can find our last three look-ahead columns for 2022, 2023 and 2024 here, here and here, respectively.

The exercise always offers a good opportunity to hear what’s on litigators’ minds and what they see coming around the corner. But Sullivan & Cromwell co-chair Bob Giuffra put a new—and I think useful—frame on the forecasting effort. Giuffra told me what people think will be the next big thing when it comes to litigation doesn’t always pan out. He says the trends that tend to occupy large law firm litigation departments are often generated by “unexpected market events.”