2. Convene the team and critique the members’ memos.

Try to use descriptive terms to give feedback about the memos. Avoid words like “good” and “bad”—they don’t give the writer any real information about the effectiveness of the memo. Here are some adjectives that you might fi nd useful as a starting point:

• Convincing

• Persuasive

• Condescending

• Concise

• Wordy

• Informative

• Detailed

• Sparse

• Neat

• Hard to follow

• Clear

• Sloppy

• Off-putting

• Effective

• Inappropriate

• Unprofessional Don’t limit your comment to a negative adjective, either.

If you say a memo is hard to follow, explain why. What makes it hard to follow? If you say a memo is wordy, explain how it is wordy. And be specifi c: point out which phrases are redundant, unnecessary, or repetitive. As you watch the falling snow, you can’t help thinking about the way the fax machine coughs out legal missives into a collection bin. You are a partner at Shaw Walker Theobald, a law fi rm with offi ces across the United States, and your offi ce sits right next to the constantly humming fax machine. You’re at your wit’s end from the incessant buzzing. Documents of all lengths and levels of importance come through the fax; sometimes, a lawyer on one fl oor will write a question on a cover letter, send it by fax to a lawyer on another fl oor at your fi rm, and then request the answer by fax! While you pack your briefcase before heading home, you think, “What a drain on productivity! And the client ends up footing the bill.

There has to be a more effi cient way to communicate.”

After you fi nish dinner, you open your work, and are again distracted—not by a fax, but by the pinging of your teenager’s instant messaging on the computer in the den.

Immediately, you think you’ve hit on a solution for the offi ce. If the fi rm used instant messaging, you could save the energy used by the fax, eliminate all the paper, and have answers in an instant. Communication would reach terminal speed! Unfortunately, you can’t just implement your idea when you walk in tomorrow morning. You’re only one of many partners, and they all have to approve anything that affects the management of the fi rm. How are you going to persuade a team of people trained to object? Instead of pulling a brief out of your bag, you fl ip to a clean sheet on your legal pad and begin drafting a convincing memo.