The Best Work is Not Always Perfect

Simply put, don’t waste the court’s time just to show off how perfect you are.

I imagine that some readers, maybe more than a few, are cringing right now after reading the title of this post. A fair amount of those cringers are probably litigators. I understand the feeling. The disclaimer that appears at the bottom of so many email messages these days — “This email was sent using a mobile device. Please excuse the brevity and typos.” — nauseates me. Are we all really in such a hurry and so busy that we cannot take 10 seconds to make sure that the spelling and punctuation in a one- or two-line message is correct? Your head is nodding in agreement right now, don’t deny it.

I admit that I am often a tough editor when I review someone else’s writing. I am also tough on myself. I agonize about specific word choices, phrasing, punctuation, and overall composition. You are judging me right now, aren’t you? I am a perfectionist, albeit an imperfect one. This is probably the “flaw” or “weakness” most readily embraced by most professionals. It is not a bad thing to strive for perfection, but it is a flaw, and one that can kill productivity. Worse yet, if you constantly strive to make everything you produce absolutely “perfect,” you are likely not producing your most efficient or best work. I write this after I edited this paragraph three times.

I first began to learn the lesson that perfection does not always produce the best work when I was in law school. I lost so many hours over researching paper assignments for some of my classes and I was soon overwhelmed. My days were packed and the time I had to get law school work done was limited. I was a student in Fordham Law’s evening division and I had a full-time job. The work had to get done, and it had to be very good. I soon learned though, that it had to be effective and impactful, but not necessarily perfect. If I had not learned that lesson early on, law school would have been a miserable experience. I am happy to say, at least after the first year, it was not.

So, what do I mean when I say that work does not have to be perfect to be the best? Aren’t those two things the same? Well, no. You can write a 50-page brief that cites every single authority that supports your legal argument, is perfectly formatted, and beautifully written, WITH NO TYPOS, and still not get your point across to convince a court to rule in your client’s favor. You can write that same brief in 25 pages, citing only the most recent and relevant cases in your jurisdiction that support your position, distinguishing the cases that are most troublesome for your argument, that is concise and serves your point up on a silver platter for the court. That brief will not address every single possible issue, but it gets to the central issue that you need the court to decide. That brief will do the job. The perfect brief might seem impressive to you, but it may also frustrate the court, particularly if the court perceives it to be full of material that does not focus on the central issue. Simply put, don’t waste the court’s time just to show off how perfect you are.

My beef with perfectionism should not suggest to you that I think it is okay not to always do your best work. There is no excuse for sloppy, incomplete work, unedited submissions, incorrect legal citations, or sloppy papers. Perfect, however, is not always the best work that you can produce, and it is important to recognize the difference. A good lawyer always has a lot of work to do and must find a way to get it all done well. That sometimes means that you cannot hold onto a project until you think it is perfectly done. You have to know when something is good and will get the job done, even if not absolutely perfect. If you cannot do that, you risk losing a lot of time to the unnecessary labor of achieving a high polish that will likely go unnoticed and may not get you the result you want or need for your client. That may mean that, on a rare occasion, you may send a quick message with a typo in it from your mobile device. If that message communicates something important and timely that gets you the result you need, it is okay that it was not perfect.

Do the best work you can to achieve your purpose. That is true perfection.


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Christine A. Rodriguez is of counsel to the firm Balestriere Fariello and successfully represents individuals and small businesses in all manner of employment discrimination, civil rights, criminal defense, civil litigation and commercial litigation matters. She also advises small businesses on all aspects of legal matters from contract to employee issues. You can reach her by email at christine. a. rodriguez@balestrierefariello. com.

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