Unnecessary complexity

A wise person once observed: “too many people take a situation and create complexity where none is needed.”

This is definitely true of lawyers.

But it’s also sometimes true of engineers.

For example, consider the story about the early days of NASA’s space program,

NASA engineers discovered ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity.

So spent a decade, and huge amounts of money, developing a pen that wrote in zero gravity.

It worked on almost any surface, and at extremely low temperatures, and in any position a NASA astronaut might be in while writing.

Meanwhile, in the Russian program

Their space engineers settled on a less expensive solution…

Their astronauts used pencils.

We lawyers often act more like the NASA engineers. Probably because we’re comfortable with complexity.

It feels normal, even when it’s unnecessary.

And so we often wind up working harder than we need to.

Perhaps you can’t eliminate much complexity in the practice of law, but…

You can in the management of your business.

So think about it.

Where are you working to create zero-gravity pens when a pencil will do the job just as well?