Write it Down
Many restaurants (especially those attempting to charge a premium for their services) require waiters to take your order without writing anything down. This is typically accompanied by clasped hands and a soft “of course” with each order. While this is elegant and impressive, in my experience the memorizing waiter forgets some detail of my table’s order roughly half the time. This leads to a sotto voce drive-by with a mumble of “Was that a Caesar salad, sir?” or “That was medium on the steak correct?”
Partly because I was a waiter once, and partly because the waiters don’t make the rules, I always politely reply that it was “mixed, not Caesar” or “medium rare, not medium.” Still, on the inside, I am a bit miffed. I think, “How hard could it be to write it down?” I’m all for elegance and cool memorization tricks, but when the waiter is back two minutes later with questions, the aura lifts.
Being an associate in a law firm is a lot like being a waiter (and consecutively a cook as well). You are constantly taking orders from multiple partners and clients, and you are supposed to take all of those orders back to your closet-sized office and mix them into a delicious legal bisque. Whether it is an offering document or a motion to dismiss, your ability to get all of these orders right is a trick. And if you fail to remember or understand these orders, clients and superiors will seldom be quietly miffed. They will be downright hostile.
So, how does one best avoid such hostilities? Write it down. Write down everything that is important regarding the order you are taking. Don’t be panicked or in a hurry. Calmly take notes, ask questions and make sure you understand the essence of every requested ingredient. For me, I carry a spiral-bound notebook with me everywhere I go in the office. This pad is critical for a couple of reasons: First, in many Avvo meetings, I am tasked with multiple follow-up items. In a fast-paced environment like Avvo or a law firm or corporation, the tasks quickly stack-up each day and my or anyone else’s ability to remember the increasing to-do list is close to impossible. Studies show that your short-term memory can typically store seven or so items for roughly 15 to 30 seconds without certain memorization tools. If you are like me, you can store half the items for half the time.
Second, short-term memory aside, I see writing things down as a sign of respect and efficiency. On the respect side, whether it is a client, employee or superior, writing things down says “I am listening to you, I respect this task and I intend to get it done correctly.” Just go back to a client for the same information a couple of times and surely they will wonder whether they are getting the respect they deserve. On the efficiency side, for an organization to run efficiently, people cannot constantly be guessing at instructions or asking others to repeat themselves. I am reminded of Kevin Kline in the still-fabulous movie, “A Fish Called Wanda.” Kevin, playing the role of new-age philosophical idiot “Otto,” responded to most important instructions with “What was the middle part?”
Whether you are an associate, paralegal, partner or CEO, don’t be Otto.
Especially for associates, partners seldom have the time or patience to revisit instructions/issues which are probably simple to them and completely foreign to you. In my old firms, I would often have a tough time getting a partner’s time for additional information, as they were making requests from other time zones and expected the perfect answer on their desks when they arrived from their red-eye in the morning. There is no worse feeling than being a younger lawyer, sitting at your desk, and thinking, “I’m not sure what [insert powerful partner’s name] is asking, but I can’t go ask her again.” It’s an even worse feeling if you know the task is not hard, but you just can’t remember all of the facts, issues or requests that the partner laid-out in his drive-by assignment shooting.
So, write it down and save yourself some stress and increase your efficiency and competency. With your orders solidly recorded and defined, you can then go back to your office, put on your chef’s hat and enjoy adding just the right ingredients to your bisque.
August 4th, 2010 at 9:29 am
Nice metaphor, Mark.
It’s interesting to me how the benefits of not writing things down don’t translate outside of the restaurant at all. Though I agree with you that committing orders to memory is slightly annoying, on some level I understand why restaurants do it. But in the professional realm, there’s absolutely no benefit; it increases the likelihood that you’ll forget something, and no one’s even impressed by your ability to memorize in the first place.
Thanks for the good post and reminder to always keep my notebook close.
Ben
August 4th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
[...] by Keith Lee Just a quick note to read Mark Britton’s (CEO at avvo.com) post, “Write It Down.” Something of which I am a large proponent. It’s #2 in my 5 Basic Mistakes for a New [...]
August 22nd, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Great point. I make it a practice to keep my initial client notes in my file. I often refer back to them.