Mary Roh now has a lawyer. She still has no lawsuit. What does Roh want from a lawsuit? She, like most litigants not bearing grudges, wants her money back. She cares all about result and not at all about process. The faster and cheaper she gets the result she wants, the happier she will be.

At her first meeting with her lawyer, Harry Hahn, Roh asks: “When do we go to court?” Hahn answers: “Not so fast. The first thing that we have to consider is in which court we can bring a lawsuit. We need a court that has what lawyers call ‘jurisdiction.’ The court must have jurisdiction both over the subject matter of the lawsuit and over the parties. Lawyers call the first type ‘subject matter jurisdiction’ and the second type ‘personal jurisdiction.’ If more than one court has both subject matter and personal jurisdiction, we will have to choose among them.” In the United States, the American Hahn is likely to add, “I will look for the court that I think will get you the best result based on the law of the court and its personnel.” American lawyers call the practice of looking for the most favorable court “forum shopping.”