Legal Commentary

How Do Big Law Firms Teach This?

By Patrick J. Lamb

What About Clients? periodically reviews its 12 Rules of Client Service.   Rule 10 is one of the most nuanced.  From today's WAC?:

Rule 10: Be Accurate, Thorough and Timely--But Not Perfect.

Ah, devil perfectionism: it's the curse of eldest children, professionals, many knowledge workers, most lawyers, all spouses, your Mom, and the geek classes, or Techwazee. The horror, the horror. Be excellent, not perfect. See Rule 10 in WAC?'s annoying-but-accurate 12 Rules.

"Be excellent, not perfect."  Sounds like a line from an inaugural address.  But for the sake of completeness, I went back to the original discussion of Rule 10:

"But Not Perfect." Not talking about mistakes here. I refer to the paralysis of high standards. I know something about the second part of Rule 10--because I tended to violate it when I was younger. And I still want to. Perfectionism is the Great Destroyer of Great Young Associates. Don't go there. Don't be so stiff and scared you can't even turn anything in because you want it "perfect" and you keep asking other lawyers and courts for extensions. It's not school, and it's no longer about you. Think instead about Rule 8: Think Like The Client--and Help Control Costs. Balance efficiency with "being perfect", and err on the side of holding down costs. If a client or senior lawyer in your firm wants your work to be "perfect", and for you to charge for it, believe me, they will let you know.

The failure to achieve anything close to this balance is certainly high up on clients' "drives me up a tree" list.  I know the conversations we routinely have with our associates on this issue.  But it made me wonder, when you have hundreds or thousands of associates, how to train them to strike this balance in a way that is satisfying to clients?  Particularly when you are paying salaries and bonuses and advancing people to partner based on excellence and hours and not balance?

Full post as published by In Search of Perfect Client Service on January 21, 2009 (boomark / email).