Fortune favors the brave…

This is an excellent - if short - expose at the Work Matters blog on one of the legal industry’s ailments: a failure of courage in the practice of law.  Here’s a bit of it:

As lawyers, we often do — not what is needed — but what others cannot criticize: We take the unneeded deposition, file the meritless motion, pile on the repetitive witness.

I see lawyers making their lives and the lives of those around them much harder than necessary, on a routine basis, just to avoid the possibility that someone could question whether they did everything necessary in the handling of a particular matter.  In fact, I can’t say I haven’t done it myself.

Stop doing that, trust your judgment - if you believe it trustworthy.  Ah, and therein lies the rub.