In contrast to manufacturing or other industries where mechanical mistakes can be blamed for failure, if a legal project goes wrong, human performance is pretty much the only factor. That’s not to say that the lawyer is the only human involved, or that chance, randomness, and capriciousness can’t play a part. But even so, if there are failings they won’t be mechanical. They’ll be human, and usually they’ll be on us, the lawyers. Clients don’t care who on the legal team made the mistake, they are only interested in having it corrected. This is why we need to talk about mistakes.

Lawyers make mistakes. It’s impossible to do our job and never make a slip, an error of judgment or a miscalculation. The thing is, if you’re evaluating your project carefully then most times the effect of your mistake will be something visible, and correctible. No one needs to own them; they’re just error states. Find them early, don’t hide them, learn from them. That’s it.

Let’s focus on addressing mistakes. In a truly collaborative environment, the mantra should be: “The first thing we do is recognize a mistake, then we address it together, then learn from it”.

So that’s what we do with mistakes.

But it might not be that simple. Lawyers are believed to have certain distinctive personality traits that matter when it comes to mistakes; they are often naturally independent, resistant to being managed, and sensitive to criticism, and maybe even have an innate reluctance to admit errors. If this is so, then a lawyer who makes a mistake that goes unnoticed might be instinctively reluctant to draw attention to it.

This is why the cultural approach to errors is vitally important. As we have discussed, legal projects are dynamic, fast moving, and challenging. The work is often pressurized and requires effective teamwork. We have seen in preceding lessons how errors can arise in planning, execution, or from external support. With the right culture, it doesn’t matter if things go wrong or who the culprit is. What should matter is that errors are detected and adjustments are made.

Any law firm or department with a blame culture is a danger to itself and its clients. Not only will correctable errors be more likely to remain undetected, but the firm will lose the opportunity to acquire valuable ‘learnings’ from the project and so improve.