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Be Efficient With What You Know: You Can't Remember Everything, And You Don't Need To

Don’t fall into the memorization trap; focus your resources on knowledge, not trivia.

By Matthew W. Schmidt  
on
Matthew W. Schmidt

Matthew W. Schmidt

In law, it’s often tempting to try to remember everything and become overly focused on details and memory games. Don’t fall into that trap, and focus your resources on knowledge, not trivia.

Roger Ebert used to complain that people would approach him with movie trivia questions, either because they assumed that he had memorized every obscure cinematic fact, or because they felt validated by stumping the world’s most famous movie critic. Ebert was usually polite, but after decades of enduring this, he’d had enough and wrote a column with the unsubtle title “The Plague of Movie Trivia.” He complained about the amateurs who expected him to “clutter [his] memory with useless facts” and spent another 800 words explaining how no one could, or should, possibly know every useless detail of movie history. His main issue was that movie trivia “mistakes information for knowledge,” and there’s no end to information.

You Don’t Need to Remember Everything

Everyone naturally takes satisfaction in immediately knowing a fact that no one else in the room knows, and lawyers probably more than most. There’s certainly a cachet in it. David Boies is famous for his memory, including his ability to recall case citations seemingly at will. Television and movies are filled with lawyers who cite to sections of United States Code in casual conversation.

If you naturally remember these things, that’s great and sometimes useful. People have a remarkable ability to recall facts about topics that they find interesting. But lawyers often feel like they need to know everything all the time. That’s not useful. And if you’re not careful, you can slip from the person who remembers the name of every Kentucky Derby winner because they’re really into horseracing to the person who spends their time reading up on obscure sports facts just in case the topic ever comes up.

Someone once told me that if you’re a phone call away from the answer, you’re an expert on that topic. If a client asks you a tax question and you don’t know the first thing about tax, you’re still adding value as long as you have someone you can ask. If someone gives you an insider trading hypothetical that requires you to check some articles to confirm that you’re right, you still know the answer. This is true within a case team as well. There’s no reason for every member of the team to continually know every fact, every date, and where you keep every file. Attempting to do so on large cases is not only setting yourself up for failure when you don’t meet an impossible goal, it also means you’re misallocating your time and effort.

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In addition to wasting time, you’re also increasing the risk of error. As any trial lawyer—or follower of the Satanic abuse panic of the 1980s—knows, one of the flaws of the human memory is that we’re naturally inclined to be overconfident in our own recollection. Eyewitness testimony is often highly suspect, and recent studies show that even the act of remembering events can change how we later recall them. If you’re remembering something minor like a case cite you’re about to type into Westlaw or you have sufficient checks to not rely on your memory, then this isn’t a problem. But if you’ve set yourself up to believe that you need to remember every fact and expect that you’ll be able to, you’re setting yourself up for overconfidence and failure.

Obviously, notes will get the job done, but my colleagues and I know that the best resource is usually your team. Efficient distribution of information is key, and utilizing comparative advantage to have overlapping experts on different topics on your case team allows you to maximize the depth of your team’s recollection and effectiveness far more than every person attempting to be a jack of all trades. This way, you maximize the value to your clients and your chances of winning.

Know What You Do Need to Know

Even more importantly than reducing error, freeing yourself from every person attempting to remember everything allows you to focus more on knowledge, not information. You know who on your team knows certain information, and know how to access any needed facts. And you free up your time and mental space to focus on legal strategies and the big picture, making yourself less likely to be bogged down in unnecessary details.

Obviously, sometimes you do need to know nearly everything, most notably when you’re appearing in court. But humans are great at quickly memorizing large amounts of facts that only need to be known for a short period of time, especially with the aid of notes. For centuries, barristers have traditionally studied up on a case only the night before argument, becoming complete masters of all facts of the case for a short period of time. Then, after they no longer needed that information, they likely forgot it all, freeing their memory to move on to the next task.

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So next time you watch a movie, remember Roger Ebert’s somewhat obsessive hatred of movie trivia, and ask yourself whether you’re spending too much mental effort on remembering the wrong things.

Matthew W. Schmidt has represented and counseled clients at all stages of litigation and in numerous matters including insider trading, fiduciary duty, antitrust law, and civil RICO. He is of counsel at the trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at matthew.w.schmidt@balestrierefariello.com.

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