The Lawyer’s Flawed Search for Perfection
By Jim Calloway, Director, OBA Management Assistance Program

Do not take the title of this column the wrong way. Striving to come as close to perfection as possible in one’s life is generally a laudable goal. We always want to prepare perfect work product for our clients. Lawyers are by nature and training proofreaders and detail-checkers. But we all make mistakes and will continue to make mistakes. In fact, Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Freedom is not worth having if it doesn’t include the freedom to make mistakes.”

Hopefully most of our mistakes will be of the minor, repairable sort and not the life-altering type.

But today I want to discuss the search for perfection as it relates to technology purchases for the law office. Technology purchases make many lawyers and law firm administrators nervous. Small firm lawyers may worry that they lack the resources or budget of their big firm counterparts. Larger firm lawyers may worry that committees and compromises will result in a less-than-perfect result. As lawyers, we all strive for the best. We want the best decisions on behalf of our clients. We want to make the best decisions on behalf of our law firms. But there are times that the best isn’t really the best.

Voltaire once said, “The best is the enemy of the good.”

I’m certainly not the first person to note that sometimes “good enough” is better than the absolute best even though that may seem like a logical contradiction. Even though this may seem illogical, bear with me for a moment. This is an important concept, combining principles of time management with the complexity of technology acquisition.

I often see this principle in action in law firm software technology purchases, particularly practice management software.

The law firms invest large amounts of otherwise billable time investigating and researching a software purchase. Smart people, well accustomed to research and decision making, will carefully compare sets of product features and needs. But the result is not always accomplished because the drive for perfection gets in the way.

Perhaps after an initial investment of time they run out of steam and have to get back to real work for a while. A few months later when they return to the topic, some software provider now has a new release, which can start the process all over again. Or perhaps the number of feature comparisons that are, as the saying goes, apples versus oranges, simply causes the participants to shut down.

Let's look at the decision-making process this way:

At this point in the process, there has been a reasonable investment of time on very important matters. Much progress has been made and the process is close to being accomplished. Sadly, this is sometimes where things go off track. Three products have been identified, with each one likely being good enough.

But at this point, the process can become a time sink. Does a $30 per seat higher cost justify what one reviewer says is slightly faster calendar search operation? Is integration with Outlook more valuable than color customization of file labels by matter category? How do you compare the fact that one product offers annual telephone support at a fixed fee while another company charges per call while a certified consultant for a third is just 20 minutes away?

If something is good enough to serve, how much extended effort to make the perfect call is really a good investment?

The reason why “good enough” is often better than “best” is the cost of the time that it takes to examine and analyze those last few details. There is a significant difference in the benefit realized the more limited and narrow your investigation becomes. Pruning the list of a dozen or more products down to a few is valuable and, often, is fairly easy. The last decisions are much harder.

It is very easy to spend another eight or 10 hours trying to make a decision after you are almost there. You can invest those hours for very little comparative gain.

Let me assure you that there is no perfect choice. Make a choice that is good enough.

It’s really difficult for some of us to do this. But there are too many law firms out there who have been trying to get this decision made for a really long time.

To give you a little more help, I’ve updated one of my old articles and uploaded it to our Starting a Law Practice Web Directory. It is called “Picking the Best Law Office Software” and you can download it from the OBA Web site.

Did I mention that when I write these pieces I often go over them and change them again and again? Sometimes the whole theme changes in the process. Yet there’s always more that I could do. But I’ve had to teach myself to be satisfied that it is good enough.

So suppose you really want to purchase practice management software. After you’ve done the initial work as illustrated in the table above and you’ve narrowed it down to three products, how do you finish the job?

Well, here’s one way.

Schedule a meeting at 4:30 p.m., preferably on a Friday. Get all the decision makers in one room and lock the door. Announce that no one leaves the room until a decision is made. Serve lots of beverages.

Originally published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal May 20, 2006 - Vol. 77; No.15