Biglaw, In-House Counsel

Make It Perfect; Then Send It To Me

Why should your boss bother looking at anything other than your best work?

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Here’s the rule: Make it perfect; then send it to me.

(Yeah, yeah: That’s a slight overstatement, and there might be occasional exceptions to the rule. But let’s explain the rule first, for the benefit of the slow students. We’ll teach the exceptions to the advanced students next semester.)

The old guy — the curmudgeon who’s heading up the team — has been playing this game for decades. He’s been marking up crappy drafts since before you were born. He’s been receiving bad drafts at 6:30 p.m. on Friday (“so that you can have the weekend to look at it”) since God was young. That crotchety old coot really, really, really is not interested in seeing more bad work. (Put yourself in his shoes for a minute: Why would he possibly want to see your appalling first draft?)

Make it perfect; then give it to him. Why should he bother looking at anything other than your best work?

That’s the rule. Here’s a corollary . . .

The corollary is this: Don’t even ask about the rule!

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The old coot does not want to see your first draft. Period.

If there’s a choice between you doing the work and him doing the work, he wants you to do it. Period.

Don’t pester him by asking silly questions. Like these:

“I’ve attached an early first draft of the brief. We haven’t yet finished doing our legal research. We’re still revising the statement of facts. And we of course haven’t yet cite-checked this or proofread it. Do you care to take a look?”

No, he doesn’t.

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Really.

Never.

(As I said, there may be a tiny exception to this rule. Don’t worry about the exception; follow the rule. You’ll learn the exception next year. If you ignore the rule and inflict poor quality stuff on people who matter, there won’t be a next year. Trust me.)

“I’m your accountant. I need some obscure information about a small stock transaction you made last year. You could rummage around through some semi-functional website for hours trying to find this piece of information for me, or I could make a phone call and track it down for you. When we ran into the same issue last year, you gave the necessary consent and I made the call for you; that old consent will suffice for this year’s call. So do you want to go to the website and do this yourself, or shall I make the call for you? Let me know which you prefer.”

Which do you think I prefer?

“We have a big issue percolating. We’ll have to present it to senior management. We’ll need a few PowerPoint slides describing the issue and some short background materials — maybe five pages. Do you want to draft that stuff up, or shall I take a crack at it?”

What do you think?

Don’t even send this email. Send the draft slides and background materials, in final form and ready to go to the CEO.

“Thanks for your comments on the first draft of the brief. I’ve made your changes. I haven’t yet received input from Tom, Dick, and Harry. Here’s the draft that shows your changes. Tomorrow, after I hear from the others, I’ll send you a nearer-final version of this.”

Don’t bother sending today’s draft. Your recipient will be happy just seeing the one that’s ready to go.

“I know I sent you a draft this morning. Here’s a new draft in which we corrected a couple of typos in footnote four. I’ll be taking a look at footnote six later today. Then I’ll send you the draft with an improved footnote six. Tomorrow, I’ll turn my keen eye to footnote seven, and then I’ll send you that draft. I’ve decided that you’re a nasty old coot who no longer deserves to live, and I figure if I keep torturing you like this, you might decide to jam needles in your eyes or simply die of apoplexy. I look forward to receiving your comments.”

You want my comment?

You do it! You do it!

Make it perfect; then send it to me.

There’s no need even to ask.

Mark Herrmann is the Chief Counsel – Litigation and Global Chief Compliance Officer at Aon, the world’s leading provider of risk management services, insurance and reinsurance brokerage, and human capital and management consulting. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Inside Straight: Advice About Lawyering, In-House And Out, That Only The Internet Could Provide (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

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