This Little Measure

• Author: Steven B. Levy
• Date: July 17, 2017

Font large upon a central screen, my new hybrid car informs me about my fuel efficiency.

Big numbers. Right in front of me. Hovering around fifty miles a (US) gallon.

Inspiring me to keep it there. To accelerate more slowly. Gentle my Kia Niro up our precipitous hills. Ease off the gas on the flats, letting battery power take over. Even drive – slightly – slower on Seattle’s crumbling, potholed streets.

It is a basic tenet of any measurement science, including project management, that you get what you measure. My quantified efficiency glowing large between the spokes of the steering wheel, I change my driving habits, at least a bit. I’ll stipulate that I’m amenable to its siren call, having bought a hybrid in the first place, but I’m still a New York City driver at heart.

The Challenge

Herein lies the challenge for anyone managing a legal project:

1. You get what you measure, and
2. If what you measure isn’t directly aligned to your goals, you’ll work with decreased efficiency.

Lawyers do this all the time, of course. The profession measures hours. But clients don’t request hours, they request advice, or solutions, or suggestions. Professional ethics – and the inner drive most in the profession share – leads to hours spent in pursuit of those goals, but too often lawyers misfire at least a little. It often appears in the guise of too much work, work unlikely to prove dispositive, T’s not just crossed but re-crossed and re-re-crossed until they disappear beneath the weight of the ink.

One reason we measure hours is because other measures are at least as tricky. Results? What is the “result” of a litigation, for example, where so few matters actually go to verdict and where even verdicts often resemble pseudo-Solomonic attempts to split the baby? Deliver a good contract? Define “good.”

The Options

Given the fallibility of so many measures, what are the options?

1. Don’t measure, or
2. Understand the gap between what you’re measuring and the real goals, and ensure that your institution can accommodate that understanding.

I’m not a big fan of #1 in anything more complex than an hour or two’s work. That said, for many short-cycle tasks, shunning specific metrics while relying on a common framework may indeed be more efficient than spending time trying to delineate a near-term yardstick. I don’t try to measure my son’s efficiency (or efficacy) in cleaning his room, but rather take a done/not-done picture of success, and trust that with growing maturity will come a...