As the day of reckoning for those involved in the BP Deepwater Horizon spill draws near, will the oil behemoth settle or will victims get their day in court?

An answer isn’t likely to come before the February 27 trial date, but even with the clock ticking on the labyrinthine lawsuit, more than a few pundits have come down on the side of settlement. There are compelling reasons to do so on both sides of the case, they say.

“This is not something that anyone wants to try,” Houston-based trial lawyer David Berg told Bloomberg Businessweek. “The stakes are too high.”

For BP, those stakes are up to more than $75 billion, including $22.5 billion the company has already paid in cleanup, response, and other costs, according to a Times-Picayune report. Included in the total are maximum of $17.6 billion in civil fines for violations of Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and other laws; $5 billion in natural resource damages; and $15 billion in criminal penalties.

On the non-monetary front, BP faces continued reputation tarnishing, stockholder angst, and deteriorating relations with the U.S. agencies that butter its bread.

“BP decided to continue drilling in the Gulf (after the oil spill) and in fact is looking to expand its footprint in the Gulf,” David Uhlmann, a former head of the U.S. Justice Department's Environmental Crimes Section, told the Picayune. “BP cannot be successful if the company is in a legal war with the government that controls drilling leases. Making peace with the federal government is of enormous value to BP's business model.”

The feds also have incentive to make nice, according to Anthony Sabino, a law professor at St. John’s University in New York. While Clean Water Act fines could more than triple if U.S. District Court Judge Carl Barbier finds BP grossly negligent, the government might not want to take the chance he won't (or that his ruling might be overturned on appeal), Sabino told Businessweek.

“An adverse ruling against them would have a bad effect for decades,” in terms of U.S. environmental law enforcement, he said. “The smart move is to settle.”

Like most stories though, the tale of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill—which exploded April 20, 2010, killing 11 people—has far more than two sides. Also in the tide of litigation will be BP's partners and a throng of private individuals and businesses that eschewed the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, which settles complaints against BP under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.

The group of independent plaintiffs, which are separate from the government’s case, would probably be awarded more than $1 billion, according to the Picayune. Much more is at stake between BP and its Deepwater partners Transocean, which owned the drilling rig, and Halliburton, which cemented the well’s drill hole.

The three companies have been blaming each other for the incident for more than a year, but the federal lawsuit might mean that BP has to shoulder the blame or risk being thrown under the bus by the other two, which are co-defendants in the suit.

“It’s always a smart strategy to reduce the number of your adversaries before trial, especially if it’s a codefendant that might heap blame upon you,” Sabino said. “You settle as soon as you can as best as you can with the adversaries who can do you the most damage.”

How the maneuvers will play out is anyone’s guess. Experts do agree on one thing, however—we probably won’t learn the answer until the nth hour. “A global settlement will be difficult to reach,” Uhlmann said. “It will not occur until the eve of trial, but it will get done.”