If you’ve ever had a referral source ask whether you handle Identify Your Target and felt your answer was technically true but unsatisfying, you’re in the right place. The path from ‘I can do it’ to ‘I’m the person to call’ is more concrete than it looks.
Intended for guardians ad litem comparing their current approach to Identify Your Target with what experienced practitioners in the area actually do.
For guardians ad litem, Identify Your Target affects the child’s best interests in ways that need to be surfaced for the court. The GAL’s role is to evaluate the impact on the child and articulate findings in a way the court can use, not to make decisions about the underlying Identify Your Target questions. Effective GAL reports keep this distinction clear.
What most practitioners do
Standard Identify Your Target practice has become well-defined enough that CLE programs, professional standards bodies, and practitioner texts all describe roughly the same workflow. The substantive details vary by jurisdiction and matter, but the structural pattern is consistent across most practitioners doing the work.
The conventional approach to Identify Your Target for guardians ad litem has settled into a recognizable pattern over the past decade. Most practitioners follow a similar intake structure, a similar analytical sequence, and a similar deliverable format. The convergence reflects real practical wisdom — these patterns work for most matters most of the time.
Where the standard fails
The standard approach to Identify Your Target fails in identifiable ways. The first is when the matter has unusual structural features (multi-state, international, business-owner with complex compensation) that the standard workflow doesn’t accommodate well. The second is when the parties have unusual dynamics (high conflict, significant power imbalance, financial abuse) that the standard intake doesn’t surface. The third is when the substantive area has been changing recently and the standard analytical methods haven’t caught up.
Practitioners who do Identify Your Target consistently see the same standard failures across years. Matters where the analytical methodology produces technically correct results that don’t fit the specific situation. Matters where the standard intake misses important context. Matters where the standard deliverable format doesn’t serve the actual case need. Recognizing these failure patterns at intake — and adjusting — is one of the markers of mature practice.
What more experienced practitioners actually do
Experienced guardians ad litem working in Identify Your Target routinely depart from the standard approach in specific ways. They invest more in the intake than the standard contemplates — sometimes 90 minutes or more — because the early diagnostic shapes everything downstream. They produce more interim communication with clients and co-professionals because long matters drift without it. They review their analytical work with peers before delivering, because solo work product has blind spots.
Seasoned practitioners also vary the deliverable format based on the matter. Standard memo format for negotiation-track matters. More extensive written report for litigation-track matters. Oral presentation with supporting materials for mediation-track matters. The same underlying analysis, presented in different formats, lands differently in different contexts.
Matching the approach to the specific case
The skill that develops over years isn’t memorizing more approaches — it’s recognizing matter type quickly and selecting the right one. This pattern-recognition can’t be taught directly; it accumulates from handling matters repeatedly and debriefing what worked and what didn’t.
Choosing the right approach for a specific Identify Your Target matter starts with reading the case carefully at intake. Is this a procedurally clean matter or a contested one? Are the parties cooperating with discovery or fighting it? Is the timeline driven by negotiation or by court calendars? The answers shape which version of Identify Your Target workflow makes sense. For deeper reference, see IRS Publication 504 (Divorced or Separated Individuals).
If you’re considering Identify Your Target as a focus area and you want one concrete commitment to make: pick the upcoming family-law conference closest to you and commit to attending every year for the next five years.
How VennBoard fits in
If you’re building a focus on Identify Your Target, the case-management infrastructure matters more than most practitioners think going in. VennBoard is built specifically for family-law-adjacent practitioners and handles the document organization, the multi-party coordination, and the engagement-management that makes long-arc matters manageable.
If you’re a guardian ad litem building a focus on Identify Your Target and looking for the operational backbone, visit VennBoard.com to see how it fits into your practice.
Further reading
Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement
National Center for State Courts