8. Focus on What Is Most Important

Establish what's critical by considered investigation, and then focus on that.

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The Planning Stage of any engagement includes an initial investigation component. Whether the project is a non-contentious transaction or fraught trial work, much of the lawyer’s work is investigation and analysis. Investigate, analyze, repeat. This continues into the Execution Stage, and beyond to the stages of Monitoring, Evaluation, and ultimately to the Improvement Stage.

Lawyers, by convention, are used to reading everything. It is well understood and expected, notorious even. Clients tend to imagine that if they send you a sweltering pile of dusty documents it would be read from cover to cover. And often they are right. We are all inclined to look at work comprehensively and exhaustively, to look at every avenue and consider all aspects. It is one of our biggest fears that we’ll miss something and get sued. Then along came Sturgeon’s Law, as popularized by people like cognitive scientist, Daniel C. Dennett, and it says 90% of everything is useless. This is generally true of data that confronts the lawyer during a project. A lawyer following Sturgeon’s Law would devote the majority of attention to the 10% of good stuff. And actually, that’s part of the key to lean investigation; resist becoming over-absorbed with irrelevant detail.

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