High-level managers of other lawyers have to learn to forsake complexity for simplicity

Most lawyers start their careers being trained to miss nothing, look at everything, and be very wide-ranging. They wallow in complexity, for that rack up lots of billable hours, and become quite enamored with creating and dealing with complications.

Once lawyers reach management levels, however, they need a very different orientation: they need to simplify. A good manager clears away the clutter of detail and focuses, over the longer range and on the most crucial decisions. To illustrate, a general counsel who redlines, researches the law and drafts may be stuck in complexity. They micromanage. A better general counsel concentrates on the actions or ideas that have the most leverage; they simplify to the big-picture considerations.