THE BIGGEST MISTAKE LAWYERS MAKE WHEN BUIDLING A CASE

Too many attorneys start with statutes and evidence. The better question is: where does the client want to be five years from now?

Start With the Destination

A passage I recently read in The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath stuck with me in a way that few ideas do. It described a program run by Michael Palmer, professor at the University of Virginia designed to help other professors rethink how they build their courses. His approach is called backward-integrated design.

The premise is simple: Instead of starting with the material you need to cover and dividing it into lectures and exams, you start by asking a different question: Three to five years from now, what do I want my students to still know, still be able to do, or still value?

Once you answer that question, you work backward. You design assessments that would demonstrate those outcomes. Then you design the activities that prepare students for those assessments.

The result is a course designed around purpose rather than content.

Reading this passage felt uncomfortably familiar—because the same problem exists in the legal profession.

The Typical Legal Roadmap

When a client walks into a lawyer’s office with a dispute, the process often looks something like this:

First, we identify the legal claims. Then we break down the elements of the law that must be proven. Then we begin combing through the facts and evidence to see how those elements might be satisfied. From there we chart out the procedural path—motions, discovery, depositions, trial.

It’s methodical, it feels logical, and often it’s completely disconnected from what the client actually wants.

The legal profession is very good at analyzing problems through the lens of law. But law is just a tool. It’s not the objective.

Too often we start with the equivalent of the textbook table of contents and divide it into litigation-sized chunks.

The Question That Rarely Gets Asked

One of the most important questions a lawyer can ask a client is surprisingly simple: Where do you want to be in three to five years?

Not legally or procedurally, but personally, professionally and financially. 

When you ask that question, the answers are rarely about winning motions or proving elements.

Clients say things like:

“I want to move on with my life.”
“I want to keep my business intact.”
“I want to protect my reputation.”
“I want to stop thinking about this every day.”

In other words, they’re describing outcomes, not legal theories.

And once you understand that destination, the roadmap often changes dramatically.

Working Backward

When you start with the client’s real goal, the strategy becomes clearer.

Sometimes litigation is necessary. Sometimes trial is the only way to achieve justice.

But other times the best path forward is something very different: negotiation, mediation, creative structuring, or simply resolving the dispute in a way that allows everyone to move forward.

The legal process can easily consume years of time, enormous emotional energy, and significant financial resources. If those costs don’t advance the client toward the life they actually want to build, then the strategy needs to be reconsidered.

In The Power of Moments, the professors participating in the program eventually realized that the syllabi they had carefully constructed didn’t actually advance the goals they had for their students.

It was a head-slapping realization.

Lawyers occasionally experience the same moment.

You step back and ask: Is this case strategy actually helping the client reach the future they want?

If the answer is no, it may be time to redesign the roadmap.

Law as a Tool, Not the Destination

The law provides powerful tools for solving problems. But like any tool, its value depends on how it’s used.

A good lawyer understands the statutes, the case law, and the procedural rules.

A great lawyer begins somewhere else entirely: With the client’s destination.

Because once you know where someone truly wants to go, the path forward becomes much easier to design.