Guest Post: Improve Your Effectiveness by Building Your Document Library

One of the most frequently asked about subject matters we address at LOMAP concerns templates: how do I get ‘em; how do I tweak ‘em; how can I create effective workflows usin’ ‘em. While it’s true that most of these questions come from new lawyers, we do get occasional template requests from more senior attorneys, as well. And, all of those folks can rejoice a bit today, because we have some better answers to those questions. Gerrit Betz of Exemplar Law, LLC (apparently, the rest of the office is staffed by penguins; that’s right, I said 'penguins)' offers below his take on effective processes for developing a template library. We’re delighted that Gerrit has taken the time to write this post, and to let us publish it here*. Gerrit works with start-ups and small businesses on the full range of their corporate legal issues. He has experience in drafting, reviewing and negotiating IP license agreements, trademark registration, corporate formation and governance and with compliance in private offerings of securities. You can read more about Gerrit at his bio page at Exemplar. Sorry, that’s definitely not it. Here it is.

. . .

I’m a new lawyer; and, therefore, much of what I do, I do for the first time. In fact, the few times that a repeat task has come up, I’ve been practically overjoyed at the extra confidence and comfort that I felt.

But, if I don’t have any templates ready, all those good feelings just disappear. It’s best to memorialize your experience in a near-final product, because you won’t remember that much of it when it takes a month for a repeat project to come along. Read on, and join me in a commitment to save time, reduce errors and scale your knowledge more effectively.

Step 1: Reading like a Connoisseur and Gathering Samples

Begin with the work you’ve already done. Go through documents you’ve worked on yourself and extract and organize the good parts, saving them in their own space.

Next, look outward. When anyone else hands you a document -- whether it’s in a contract negotiation or a summary judgment motion -- try to give it at least a cursory scan, with the mindset of a connoisseur. You may automatically notice others’ mistakes, so it won’t be hard to train yourself to notice others’ drafting achievements. Really hone in on the best passages and set them aside.

After you have saved the prized passages, go immediately back to what you were doing. You want this gathering activity to become a simple habit, and not a time waster.

That said, don’t copy whole documents. Especially in the beginning, you may be tempted to save any “motion for XYZ” wholesale in your templates folder. And, while this might be fine for very short documents, or documents whose value is mostly in their formatting (e.g., cover sheets or shareholder capitalization tables), it won’t work generally.

Trying to use a long document as a sample or template introduces a lot of complicating factors:

* It brings in the bad with the good. Unless you already have access to a highly targeted database of templates, there’s a low chance that an entire document is in fantastic shape. Typos, old and inapplicable terms, and incorrect citations plague even the best-drafted documents. By taking bites that are too big, you are inviting these artifacts to infect your writing, too.
* It’s harder to proof. Just for fun, check only this paragraph for typographical errors. Did you find any? I hope not, because I checked it, too. I’ll say with 90% confidence that it’s error-free. But I won’t say the same of the rest of this article, because it’s much bigger! I could proof it over and over and still miss glaring mistakes. Proofing small sections of text at a time allows you to really purify them.
* You’re only putting off the hard part. By saving an entire document as your template, you’re saying to yourself, “I can use this the next time this issue comes up.” But you can’t. You don’t know what’s inside of it because you haven’t wrestled with every single word. You want your library to be truly yours.

Step 2: Refining the Good Stuff

After some time, you’ll hopefully accumulate plenty of samples of text that you liked for one reason or another. Now you need to make them your own.

Starting out, duplicity is great. If possible, gather 2-5 examples of text that deal with similar issues. This shows a range of what is accepted or common practice.

Distill these into your own style. Try to compose them in a modular way so that you have an over-inclusive checklist from which you can simply delete unnecessary text (without introducing grammatical errors!). Here’s an example of a few “miscellaneous” terms with appropriate bolding for edits or deletion:

1. Non-Business Day Grace. If this Agreement sets a deadline or requires action on a day that is not a regular business day in the United States of America and the state of Massachusetts, the deadline or required date of action will be moved to the next regular business day.

2. Termination. Either Party may terminate this Agreement upon sixty (60) days written notice for no cause, or immediately for cause.

Certain of these terms probably won’t be necessary in every instance. But full-inclusion in a template is good for two important reasons:

1. deletion is faster than creation, and
2. now you have a checklist! A checklist will save you from lapses of memory or judgment by reminding you every single time of all the possible issues that may arise.

Step 3: Implement!

This is where the hard work pays off. The next time you have to produce a draft, I suggest starting with an ordinary outline. You’ll probably have some items in your outline like “definition of a disability under the ADA” or “shares vesting monthly for 3 years.” Now, replacing these with final-version text starts with a simple copy, paste and proof.

To ease proofing, tag the parts of your text that are dangerous. The dangerous parts are ones that sometimes don’t apply or that are sure to vary in each instance. Use your word processor’s highlight feature or anything else that will catch your attention and is guaranteed not to slip by you when you mail that document or send it as an attachment.

For Microsoft Word users, I also suggest inserting comments where special attention is required. Depending on your view settings, doing this creates a margin to the right of the page that will trigger you to address and delete each comment before you send it to any end users.

Lastly, remember that checklist comment? If you have a call with the client or opposing counsel, for example, you can use your template as an agenda for the call. You’ll have highlighted the items that require more information or agreement, which will reduce your incidences of “oops, I forgot one last thing.”

Now build those libraries and reap the benefits!

When refining, consider tips from these helpful links:

-Jay Shepherd’s 20 Ways to Write Like a Tool (blog)

-Plain English for Lawyers (also available at most law school libraries)

*This post was originally made to the Boston Bar Association New Lawyers Section homepage.

A Theory of Relativity: Time and Space and Client Capture

This week’s Massachusetts Bar Association Lawyers E-Journal Law Practice Management Section Featured Practice Tip comes from LOMAP. This week's Tip underscores the importance of speedy follow-up.

Read the Tip here.

Less Is More Focused: Lexis Practice Advisor

I’ve chosen to broadcast my one really good idea for the month of February through Attorney at Work. Yup, there’s only one . . . and they have it.

This month, I reviewed a recently-released LexisNexis product: Practice Advisor, which is a content aggregation and transactional roadmapping tool for attorneys.

Read more here.

The Utility of Futility: Your Return on Investment Post Mortem and the Resurrection

My monthly contribution to Clio’s (award-winning) Small Firm Innovation group blog (on the January theme of ‘measuring goals’) is a thinly-veiled pep talk for those who may believe that failures are the final word, with recourse to some of my favorite underdog stories. (No Tebow references -- he was a first round draft pick . . . . Well, one.)

You can read more, here.

The So-Called Experts’ So-Called Experts . . . and So Forth: On Pressure-Less Professional Reputation Construction

Every self-proclaimed expert out there is telling everyone who asks, and who will listen, that the way to true happiness = business success, is to similarly proclaim expertise -- hence, the proliferation of thrown-around terms like ‘guru’, ‘visionary’, the aforementioned ‘expert’, ‘genius’, ‘messiah’, what have you, and whatever else you can draw from the overflowing pile of businessperson descriptions tending to the use of as much terminology as one can muster to signify one’s own undeniable awesomeness.

Not that it’s bad to end up developing expertise; but, expertise should be developed in its own time. If you’re fresh out of law school trying to start a practice, or if you haven’t actually developed any settled expertise, you’re not an expert, and you can’t effectively market yourself that way -- no matter what the gurus of uber-self-confidence may say otherwise.

Certainly, you should develop a niche. And, you should seek to create yourself as a go-to source in your niche for colleagues and clients. And, you should seek to develop specialties in fact. (But, be careful of how you market yourself in those three wise.) You should endeavor, as well, to project self-confidence, even when you’re not feeling, yourself, particularly commanding. And, some of that is fake-it-until-you-make-it kind of stuff. Mindset is important, no doubt.

But, you can also psyche yourself out. Being an expert, even a self-modeled expert, carries with it a lot of pressure, especially for young and starting attorneys, who already have a perfection complex to begin with (especially after law school), and who tend to equate ‘expertise’ with ‘perfection’. Mindset is important; and, new attorneys who begin their practice lives with the wrong cast of mind can set themselves back. It’s okay to not have an immediate answer for clients -- it’s better than providing an answer based in ignorance. It’s not an admission of defeat to read a primer on a topic, to seek further assistance from a colleague or mentor, or even to refer cases out, as appropriate. Neither should new attorneys seek to take every case that comes through the door (even those that carry the promise of ready cash), especially when those cases are outside of their developing niche, or when those cases would stretch them too far beyond their existing comfort level, too soon. Knowing everything, on the fly, without need of further resources or research; having the ability to take on any case, no matter how complex, at any time, and for any client. These are, apparently, things that experts can do. But, you don’t have to do them if you’re not an expert.

Rather than downloading an already sizeable task (starting out in the practice of law) with the added weight of a demanding, and essentially immature, expertise, take a load off instead. At the outset, let your niche, pricing and style of practice be what differentiates you. Talk/write about what you enjoy in your practice and/or what interests you, within specific areas of your practice. Don’t propose to have all the answers; reference more senior attorneys, or found mentors. Make sure that you like what you’re doing, and the ways in which you’re doing it. If you’re not having fun, it’s like you’re doing chores -- and nobody wants to do chores ( . . . or, maybe they do). There is a reason why this is called ‘professional development’ and not ‘the immediately well-rounded professionalism of the recent law graduate’. You’re not a fully-formed/fully-grown professional coming direct out of law school, or any school, for that matter. Don’t add the additional and tremendous pressure to the transition of the attachment of an expertise to yourself that does not yet exist, no matter what you hear.

But, don’t feel so bad: the entirety of life is a learning experience; and, that’s the way it should be. Even if you get to a point where you can pretend a complete expertise, there will be plenty of things occurring to make you feel inadequate. There is no truth to the rumor that someone has ‘seen it all’. There is always more to see. Society and the law are so complex, including administratively complex, that there will always be another twist or turn that you did not see coming, and with which you’ll have to deal, hopefully with a lithe mind, unfixed to a certain notion of what expertise you should be required to have. As a new attorney, more than anything else, you need to allow yourself time and space to grow in the profession. Rather than focusing solely on the most immediate achievement of the end-goal, do it right: acknowledge the process, and be present in it.

. . .

Liner Notes

There are actual gurus, of course . . . like me and Rodney Dowell . . .

Easy, easy. I’m kidding. I can’t possibly be given over to complete hypocrisy in the span of a single paragraph . . . It would take at least two. (I said easy . . .)

Those original gurus are those Hindu/Buddhist teachers that you hear about--you know, the ones who inadvertently gave rise to Mike Myers’ latest attempt at a career resurrection post-“Austin Powers” franchise work: the awful “The Love Guru”. (Although, he had a sweet run for a while there; “So I Married an Axe Murderer” is an excellent film.)

Gurus do dabble in music from time to time, including Bhagavan Das, who also found time to convert Richard Alpert, who I always thought was saved by Lapidus.

Indian spiritualism, and the music generated therefrom has, of course, played a role in popular music since, at least, the 1960s.

The Beatles famously introduced the sitar to pop music via George Harrison via Ravi Shankar in “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)”, and in “Love You To” and “The Inner Light”, despite John Lennon’s coming disillusionment, exemplified by his attack on the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, tempered down, at George Harrison’s request, to “Sexy Sadie”.

More generally, ‘raga rock’ gained some traction in the mid-60s, with the underrated The Kinks’ “See My Friends”, Traffic’s “Paper Sun”, the Moody Blues’ “Om” and the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black”.

But, the party was over when Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show began poking fun.

And, late versions have been, uom . . . not so good.

Some more obscure songs related to this line, and that I like, include the Buffalo Springfield’s “Buffalo Stomp (Raga)” and Yusuf’s “Indian Ocean”.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to open my Chakras, and to have a Twinkie, before I can’t anymore.

Tone Rangers: Be Certain that Your Emails Do Not Offend, Inveigle or Obfuscate

This week’s Massachusetts Bar Association Lawyers E-Journal Law Practice Management Section Featured Practice Tip comes from LOMAP. This week's Tip offers some suggestions for making sure you don’t email angry, including a free program that monitors your tone.

Read the Tip here.