The Value of Time in the Legal Profession

I don't know that there are any short cuts to doing a good job.

--Sandra Day O'Connor

If anyone ought to know the value of time, you would think it would be lawyers.  Many of us send out pieces of paper at the end of the month asking for money based upon the amount of time spent on clients' matters.

And yet to do good work--really good legal work--it often takes more time than we feel like we have and more time than clients want to pay for.

I'm not just talking about the time and care involved in proofing a brief to get it letter perfect, although that that is certainly part of it. My group of law nerd neat freaks reserves about 5 to 7 days before filing just for client comments, proofing, bluebooking, and more proofing. And the brief is usually out the door by early afternoon on the day of filing.

Yeah, we're those guys--the ones who never drafted a term paper the night before it was due or crammed for a test.  Sorry.

When law is done right, time is used in all sorts of other ways, some of which don't look like "working" and some of which do not even appear on the time sheet. For example:

• the time it takes to really sit still and think through a problem
• the time it takes to think about how your rule of law fits with the law as a whole
• the time it takes to put yourself on the other side of the bench (or even the other side of the case) and make your position seem reasonable from that point of view
• and  time not thinking about the case so that you're fresh enough to have that stroke of insight that can make all the difference.

Whether or not this "time" ends up on the time sheet, it is valuable time.  Yet we so often clutter our thought space with trivial busywork or Google ourselves to distraction--to which I frankly plead guilty.

Sure, you could practice law without investing this kind of time. You can look only at the short term advantage to be gained if you tie your opponent's shoe laces together or hornswaggle a judge into accepting a position you know that you you'll never hold in the long run.

But these are all short cuts, and as Justice O'Connor said, there are no shortcuts to doing a good job.  It takes time.