​I confess to being very poor at the sort of quiz questions that ask how much earth is in a hole one metre by one metre. The answer of course is none because it’s hole, but it’s very easy to rush to the answer one square metre without thinking too much about the question, and I find I tend to do this.
 
To stop jumping to conclusions in this way when I am creating legal documents or advice I do a first draft, review it, maybe discuss it with somebody else and check everything at least twice and run a spellchecker – and then do another draft. When I send the results to a client I open attachments and make sure that they are the right versions and run a spell checker again on the email.
 
Pedantic maybe but it all goes to the quality of what you send out, and nothing looks as unprofessional to the recipient as receiving the wrong or an incorrect document or correspondence with spelling mistakes.
 
But does this really matter? Aren’t we living in an age where documents will autocorrect or at least show you a spelling mistake. The technology will cover our mistakes or make them irrelevant won’t it. This is an era of communication by texts and IM’s and emoji’s. Am I living in the past? 😐
 
I had to complete a compulsory driver assessment at work this week and in addition to sensible questions about how far I drove and if I made mobile calls, it asked how often I checked the cars fluid levels - daily or weekly. Really? These days most cars go for months without needing an oil check and if anything does run low a message comes up on the dashboard telling you. The only reason I tend to open the bonnet is to fill the washer fluid again when a warning light comes on. Years ago this was different and cars less reliable or communicative. Checking oil and water and brake fluid levels on a regular basis was essential.
 
I think though there is a difference even in this age of instant communication between cars being inherently more reliable and thus needing less checking, and the requirement for a professional to be thorough and careful and accurate. It is a measure of our ability and skill and the quality of the service we provide. I was very grateful for this care and attention when I visited the dentist this week.
 
I suggest that as professionals we can and should increasingly use technology to improve and to verify the accuracy of our work, like surgeons using robots to carry out less intrusive and more precise surgery, but at the end of the day we are responsible for exercising proper care and coming to the right answer. Jumping to conclusions or misspelling are symptoms of poor practice which can and should be avoided.
 
Xenophon the Greek philosopher, soldier and historian said “Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.”

I spent this weekend in a mansion house in Wales with a large part of my extended family on my father’s side. An intergenerational mix of children from 10 months to adults from 18 through forty to 80 plus ate, chatted and played together. Parents and grandparents mingled with young adults and children sharing stories and experiences, meals and games of rounders and cricket.
 
Whilst there were of course break out groups – the late-night disco by and large attracted the younger generation - we all very much benefited from sharing the experience with people of all ages and background, developing stronger family ties and learning from each other.
 
It struck me that this is not only a great role model for a family to follow, reinforcing its values and identity, it is also a paradigm for professional firms who will very much benefit from employing a mixture of youth and experience across age groups.
 
I remember being on a management course and being elected to the leadership team tasked with the creation of a new and original board game. After two days of leading our colleagues in this task, we called in some sixth formers from a nearby school - whose fresh ideas quickly revolutionised our end product.
 
I was always impressed by the American concept idea that more senior lawyers in large US firms who may not wish to continue working full time could become “of-counsel” and share their working knowledge and client experience and contacts with the next generations. This works for the mutual benefit of the firm and the individuals.
 
It also develops respect and interworking between different age groups with potentially very different outlooks on life. This article suggests that: Workforces are becoming increasingly diverse in age demographics, creating professional environments that are rich with experience and maturity as well as youthful exuberance.
 
This harnessing of the experience of more mature people with the enthusiasm and ideas of youth is also creating its own challenges as work forces do indeed span more generations and individuals work longer. The Harvard Business review contains an interesting article discussing the challenges of Managing People from 5 Generations and how to manage and motivate people significantly older or younger than you.
 
George Bernard Shaw commented that: Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
 
Turning this around, I think I am now beginning to understand the words of the Crosby, Stills & Nash Song:
 
Teach your parents well,
Their children's hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picks, the one you'll know by.

​Ever had one of those days where everything just seems to go wrong? I had one this week. Bad news on various small things all adding up to a very frustrating day. Nothing I could put my finger on, but consistent poor fortune.
 
And then I remembered what my godfather once told me many years ago. He was one of the most intelligent man I ever met, a scientist by training and I think some kind of consulting engineer. He built model steam engines as a hobby. Anyway he said it’s all about biorhythms. According to the theory of biorhythms, a person's life is influenced by rhythmic biological cycles that affect his or her ability in various domains, such as mental, physical and emotional activity (Wikipedia).
 
He said that some days if your biorhythms were at a low point in the cycle then you had the sort of day I experienced. However there seems to be some scepticism in the scientific world and Wikipedia also describes biorhythms as a “pseudoscience”.
 
Peter J. Bentley, computer scientist and author of Why Sh*t Happens: The Science of a Really Bad Day, said that Yes, and it's our fault, I'm afraid! The statistics show that people who believe in bad luck will have more accidents on Friday the 13th. Those who have a negative attitude are more likely to endow normal little mishaps with some mystical significance.
 
Still I can’t help feeling there may be more to it! As it’s Wimbledon week here’s a quote from the American entertainer Virginia Graham that puts the subject nicely into perspective: Good shot, bad luck and hell are the five basic words to be used in a game of tennis, though these, of course, can be slightly amplified.
 
As anyone who plays cards will tell you on any given day you either get the run of the cards or you don’t. So whether or not there is any scientific basis for bad days they surely happen and perhaps the best advice is to recognise them for what they are and keep your head down and a law profile until they are over.

I have been negotiating to change my car over the last week. For the final conclusive meeting with the dealer I set myself an additional sum I wanted off the asking price. I asked for more but achieved my target.
 
It is surprising how often in a negotiation if you set a reasonable target you can get there. Certainly, not setting any negotiation objectives is like navigating the oceans without charts. You will end up somewhere but it may not of course be where you intended.
 
The aims should also be realistic. I recall getting off a plane in San Francisco with a team preparing to discuss an IT contract that was a crucial part of a corporate deal. We were all jet lagged – which was probably why at dinner that evening with one of our senior executives, who also happened to be staying in the same hotel, we agreed to seek a target price that in the cold light of the net day we rather regretted. In fact to everyone’s surprise we eventually achieved it!
 
 As Michelangelo said “The greater danger for most of us isn’t that our aim is too high and miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”
 
There are of course some risks with aggressive goal setting. An interesting article from Harvard Business School comments: Intense focus on narrow goals can keep negotiators from seeing the big picture. As a result, goals may distract them from absorbing broader lessons they could apply to future negotiations, research suggests. In addition, negotiators may be tempted to adopt competitive strategies rather than cooperative ones to meet challenging goals and, as a result, miss out on opportunities to create value for their organizations in the process.
 
The other challenge is to make sure that the whole team understands and buys into the negotiation goals – I have seen carefully planned strategies fall apart and goals missed when somebody not involved with the core team steps in and tries “to help”.
 
There are of course other reasons than the absence of goal setting why negotiations founder. Still as Dwight D. Eisenhower said “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
​ 

​Sometime ago I was sitting in a car crouched over a laptop being driven to an airport. The negotiation had however already started because the other side had deemed this critical. I was struggling with a phone connection that kept dropping off the conference call. As a result the rest of my team were managing the call and I was contributing as best as I could.
 
Fortunately, in an area with a clear signal I suddenly realised that one of my colleagues was refusing to do something our customer had just told us that the competitor in the bid had agreed to do. And in fact it was in our interest to take up the customer’s offer. I was able to promptly intervene and rescue the situation and turn it to our advantage.
 
This is what we train and practice and learn for as professionals – to recognise “the critical moments” when all our experience and knowledge can be brought to bear in recognising and resolving an issue. There are many straightforward situations which can be dealt with routinely but these are pivotal to the conclusion and eventual success of any deal.
 
The chess grandmaster Boris Spassky said My forte was the middlegame. I had a good feeling for the critical moments of the play. This undoubtedly compensated for my lack of opening preparation and, possibly, not altogether perfect play in the endgame. In my games things often did not reach the endgame!
 
This also means not expending too much wasted energy on the “dotting i’s” and crossing t’s” issues, whilst recognising these need to be done. Winston Churchill once commented You will never get to the end of the journey if you stop to shy a stone at every dog that barks.
 
As increasing automation and artificial intelligence processes potentially take on even the most profound tasks carried out by the professions, it will become increasingly important to recognise core abilities and skill sets such as this which can and should still be carried out by people - because for the foreseeable future we will simply be the best and most effective at doing them.