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vicarzOne of the changes our micromanaging manager made has turned out to be a horribly good idea. Most of the others are not, but not throwing out perfectly good water with the baby.
I went to law school, but was originally trained in litigation by a raging whole ass with little formal education. One of his tremendous strengths was a fantastic memory. He went through the case file, knew what to look for in terms of evidence, and sent out requests in which the field staff was instructed to provide all relevant evidence as he described the applicable legal standard (so they had to figure out what it was). I didn’t realize that wasn’t normal, and in fact it was a trick he developed over the years to do as little work as possible (or that was the net result). The day before the hearing, he did marathon sessions of group meetings for witness prep where he learned the case inside-out and backwards, and could dance around any witness in hearing with ease. I adapted the last part of the strategy, in which I did full witness prep the day before hearing for 8-12 hours. I also prepped for marathon sessions before that, working on the plane and all night and morning in my hotel reading, summarizing, and marking the file endlessly for days. I exhausted myself, but gained a great reputation for working long hours, being entertaining and down to earth in person, and frankly doing a good job in the hearing.
The new management felt this was risky after I had a hearing where multiple snow delays nearly resulted in me showing up the morning of the hearing without having prepped the witnesses. I did not agree, because that was the way we always did it and in 7 years I had never had such a delay. However, I found out my coworkers were not doing the same thing. I thought they were lazy.
I didn’t like the proposed change: have interviews, casual ones at least, as soon as possible in the case. However I couldn’t form arguments about why this was a bad idea rather than just a change. I admitted, if quietly, that it's essentially the same work - just earlier on. With a lower case load, I wasn't doing what had to be done immediately due to deadlines - I could do this earlier, and there was no harm caused by the order of events. I begrudgingly worked interviews into my old and new cases. Begrudgingly.
Duh.
And it turned out the early interviews are such a good idea I feel foolish for not having done them originally. They’re a duh. Early interviews mean I get to space out the activity for any time I like. It also warms up both me and the witness to recall old events. It gives me tons of time to request relevant documents, identify other potential witnesses, and predict the outcome of the case with more accuracy - earlier. The managers like it to control for the panic or surprises that come with litigation. I’m finding I like it to litigate at a less frenetic pace and even do a better job.
The sum result is I wind up doing a better job with less effort. Previously I was patriotically working myself to death too close to hearing, making up for early preparation with effort. I was humble enough to listen, concede points, change my behavior, and objectively observe the results - and realize an improvement. Humility helped me on this issue.
About memory:
When touring houses with Jason, I had a really hard time remembering which was which, and never remembering the layout of the house. He always did, and could even draw a house we had visited (and he saw more houses than me). I noted his good memory, but he poo-poo’d me saying that he had seen so many houses that he sort of knew the general layouts.
This fit studies of memory I had found in which novices and experts were tested. When chess pieces were put on a board in a way that was a likely outcome from a chess game, expert players had far better recall of the location of the pieces than novices; however when the pieces were put in a manner that was random (and markedly not a likely game outcome) the 2 groups remembered at about the same rate. The theory was, if I recall, chess experts clumped the data together into manageable pieces.
I say I have a horrible memory, that Jason remembers layouts, and my predecessor had a great memory for litigation. All may be true, but I’m finding my “memory” isn’t as terrible as it once was. I think the difference is I’m far more familiar with the law, far more familiar with the procedure, so each case is not a learning-from-scratch process taxing my spongy brain. I’ve also begun seeing more similarities, so rather than remembering each name, event, date, and legal test - I sort of clump things together. I may remember as many things, but each thing, or clump, contains more data. I essentially have to remember less, and recognize that others I thought had amazing recall may have simply, at least in part, benefited from the years of experience they had with the same type of data.
Humility - worth maintaining, but also worth revisiting. Even humility can be misplaced.
I went to law school, but was originally trained in litigation by a raging whole ass with little formal education. One of his tremendous strengths was a fantastic memory. He went through the case file, knew what to look for in terms of evidence, and sent out requests in which the field staff was instructed to provide all relevant evidence as he described the applicable legal standard (so they had to figure out what it was). I didn’t realize that wasn’t normal, and in fact it was a trick he developed over the years to do as little work as possible (or that was the net result). The day before the hearing, he did marathon sessions of group meetings for witness prep where he learned the case inside-out and backwards, and could dance around any witness in hearing with ease. I adapted the last part of the strategy, in which I did full witness prep the day before hearing for 8-12 hours. I also prepped for marathon sessions before that, working on the plane and all night and morning in my hotel reading, summarizing, and marking the file endlessly for days. I exhausted myself, but gained a great reputation for working long hours, being entertaining and down to earth in person, and frankly doing a good job in the hearing.
The new management felt this was risky after I had a hearing where multiple snow delays nearly resulted in me showing up the morning of the hearing without having prepped the witnesses. I did not agree, because that was the way we always did it and in 7 years I had never had such a delay. However, I found out my coworkers were not doing the same thing. I thought they were lazy.
I didn’t like the proposed change: have interviews, casual ones at least, as soon as possible in the case. However I couldn’t form arguments about why this was a bad idea rather than just a change. I admitted, if quietly, that it's essentially the same work - just earlier on. With a lower case load, I wasn't doing what had to be done immediately due to deadlines - I could do this earlier, and there was no harm caused by the order of events. I begrudgingly worked interviews into my old and new cases. Begrudgingly.
Duh.
And it turned out the early interviews are such a good idea I feel foolish for not having done them originally. They’re a duh. Early interviews mean I get to space out the activity for any time I like. It also warms up both me and the witness to recall old events. It gives me tons of time to request relevant documents, identify other potential witnesses, and predict the outcome of the case with more accuracy - earlier. The managers like it to control for the panic or surprises that come with litigation. I’m finding I like it to litigate at a less frenetic pace and even do a better job.
The sum result is I wind up doing a better job with less effort. Previously I was patriotically working myself to death too close to hearing, making up for early preparation with effort. I was humble enough to listen, concede points, change my behavior, and objectively observe the results - and realize an improvement. Humility helped me on this issue.
About memory:
When touring houses with Jason, I had a really hard time remembering which was which, and never remembering the layout of the house. He always did, and could even draw a house we had visited (and he saw more houses than me). I noted his good memory, but he poo-poo’d me saying that he had seen so many houses that he sort of knew the general layouts.
This fit studies of memory I had found in which novices and experts were tested. When chess pieces were put on a board in a way that was a likely outcome from a chess game, expert players had far better recall of the location of the pieces than novices; however when the pieces were put in a manner that was random (and markedly not a likely game outcome) the 2 groups remembered at about the same rate. The theory was, if I recall, chess experts clumped the data together into manageable pieces.
I say I have a horrible memory, that Jason remembers layouts, and my predecessor had a great memory for litigation. All may be true, but I’m finding my “memory” isn’t as terrible as it once was. I think the difference is I’m far more familiar with the law, far more familiar with the procedure, so each case is not a learning-from-scratch process taxing my spongy brain. I’ve also begun seeing more similarities, so rather than remembering each name, event, date, and legal test - I sort of clump things together. I may remember as many things, but each thing, or clump, contains more data. I essentially have to remember less, and recognize that others I thought had amazing recall may have simply, at least in part, benefited from the years of experience they had with the same type of data.
Humility - worth maintaining, but also worth revisiting. Even humility can be misplaced.
