Perfect Is The Enemy Of Good
Legalwriting.net is unhappy with this advice:
But Berry gives no advice whatsoever for how to accomplish that; he just threatens associates with their livelihoods and careers.
Was the client the focus of that advice? Do they really want to pay lawyers $250-$500 an hour to obsess in fear over typos? Does that do anything more than rack up billable hours?
How about some more client-centric thinking: let's encourage and reward peer-review of documents before they go out. Would Berry be happy if an associate sent a "final" draft to an associate in a completely different department, whose brain is clean of any preconceived ideas about the document, for a review? That would sniff out typos promptly; it would probably also get both associates in trouble.
Does that advance the client's interests?
“Do not ever for the second time give your senior a piece of writing with a typo or a grammatical mistake,” says Berry. “I will take it once and I will tell the junior my set speech.” But if it happens again? Well, find out for yourself.We can all agree typos are bad and, in some circumstances, unprofessional.
But Berry gives no advice whatsoever for how to accomplish that; he just threatens associates with their livelihoods and careers.
Was the client the focus of that advice? Do they really want to pay lawyers $250-$500 an hour to obsess in fear over typos? Does that do anything more than rack up billable hours?
How about some more client-centric thinking: let's encourage and reward peer-review of documents before they go out. Would Berry be happy if an associate sent a "final" draft to an associate in a completely different department, whose brain is clean of any preconceived ideas about the document, for a review? That would sniff out typos promptly; it would probably also get both associates in trouble.
Does that advance the client's interests?
