For a long time I’ve thought that American business schools and the training programs of global and often publicly-traded companies do a much, much better job than do law firms of training recruits to value and adhere to the structure of a plan on an item for action.
Do we lawyers know how to get things done, done right and done on time? Do we even value that? I wonder.
I am not talking here about the simple “keeping face” and survival requirements of meeting client deal or court deadlines, or even about the cliches of working hard, creative thinking, “out of the box”, working smart or being persistent. I mean structure, a real standard, and “practicing structure” every day–the discipline of (1) having a plan or strategy for any one project, client or non-client, (2) meeting internal project deadlines no matter what, and (3) applying the will to work that plan and timetable.
“Structure” is not just the hard process of getting things done. It’s a frame of mind and a value which must be sold to others in your shop–like the importance of making that 5 minute call to a client about a loose end at the end of the worst day you can remember, even while you could do it the next morning at 8:00. It’s realizing that letting anything but emergency tasks “slide” makes you inefficient, unlikely to meet your real goals, and tired.