There is no secret to making meetings shorter and more effective. Just think about the tenets of lean, effectiveness, and efficiency, and then do some planning. (See Lean Meeting Planner.) Plan the work, the roles and the use of each project asset. Let's illustrate the dos and don'ts with a case study. Suppose Lawyer A is a trial partner based at a New York firm. Suppose his client has been sued in Texas. Lawyer A retains local counsel and decides to arrange an in-person case conference in Texas. A meeting like this is an everyday event, but it can still be handled efficiently or inefficiently:

This doesn't look terrible. In fact, you can imagine this trip being narrated on an invoice in a way which appears to justify the expense. The meeting may still be somewhat effective, because in a roundabout way local counsel gets engaged and informed. But it's inefficient. The entire event is blighted by task duplication, wasted effort on non-core activities and lack of focus. All of this creates needless expense for the client which, in turn, is a misuse of funds, which are a vital project asset. This sort of squandering can be avoided by careful planning and assignment of roles. So now let's make it leaner.