Being perfectionists generally serves lawyers well. With a low margin for error, most legal work benefits from a perfectionist bent. Perfection, however, has a dark side, especially where the world operates on a continuum (better to worse) rather than a binary divide (right/wrong). Voltaire warned that “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” Departmental improvement initiatives already have enough natural enemies. And perfect improvement initiatives are not just expensive, they are illusory.
Go for good. While it runs contrary to our intuitions, you can often make greater gains by taking the initial, obvious, and easy steps that get a process from 80 percent inefficient to 50 percent inefficient than you can by taking the advanced, ambiguous, and arduous steps that get the process from 50 percent inefficient to 0 percent inefficient—i.e., perfect.