Many countries allow lawsuits to hold responsible parties liable for the environmental harm they cause. Such litigation remains largely untested in most biodiversity hotspots and in response to leading drivers of biodiversity loss, including illegal wildlife trade. Yet, liability litigation is a potentially ground-breaking conservation strategy to remedy biodiversity harm by seeking legal remedies such as species rehabilitation, public apologies, habitat conservation and education, with the goal to make the injured parties “whole”. However, most countries face a lack of precedent cases, limited expert guidance and the gap between legal practitioners and scientists. We propose a simplified framework for developing conservation lawsuits across countries and conservation contexts. We explain liability litigation in terms of three dimensions: 1) defining the harm that occurred, 2) identifying appropriate remedies to that harm, and 3) understanding what remedies the law and courts will allow. We illustrate the framework via a hypothetical lawsuit against an illegal orangutan trader in Indonesia. We highlight that conservationists’ expertise is essential to characterizing harm and identifying remedies, and could more actively contribute to strategic, science-based litigation. This would identify priority contexts, target defendants responsible for egregious harm, propose novel and meaningful remedies, and build new transdisciplinary collaborations.