Reading three CLE articles on Time Is Our Greatest Resource will give you the vocabulary. The actual capability comes from a different place — years of cases, a few mentor relationships, and the willingness to sit through hours of the kind of work that doesn’t feel like progress.
The audience here is guardians ad litem who want a practitioner-level read on Time Is Our Greatest Resource — what works, what fails, and where the time and money tend to go.
For guardians ad litem, Time Is Our Greatest Resource 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 Time Is Our Greatest Resource questions. Effective GAL reports keep this distinction clear.
Conventional practice
The conventional approach to Time Is Our Greatest Resource 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.
The recognized standard for Time Is Our Greatest Resource engagements involves five identifiable phases: intake, scoping, analytical work, deliverable production, and closing. Most guardians ad litem who have handled the work for several years would describe their process in these terms, even when they don’t use the same labels.
The gaps in standard approach
The standard approach also fails when the practitioner doesn’t actually do Time Is Our Greatest Resource regularly. Practitioners handling one matter every two years can’t maintain the working depth that produces good Time Is Our Greatest Resource outcomes. The standard approach assumes the practitioner has internalized it through repetition; when that’s not true, the standard becomes a checklist that produces checklist-quality work.
The standard approach to Time Is Our Greatest Resource 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.
What more experienced practitioners actually do
Alternative approaches that work better in specific contexts: tiered engagement structures (separate diagnostic, analytical, and closing engagements with separate fees) for high-uncertainty matters; collaborative engagement structures (multiple guardians ad litem working as a team) for unusually complex matters; phased engagement structures (initial consultation followed by deferred full engagement) for clients who aren’t yet ready to commit to full scope. For deeper reference, see National Center for State Courts.
Experienced guardians ad litem working in Time Is Our Greatest Resource 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.
Choosing the right method for the matter
A practical decision framework: standard approach for matters within the typical range; alternative approaches for matters with specific identifiable variations; new structures for matters that don’t fit any prior pattern. Practitioners who can recognize which category they’re in at intake produce better engagements than those who run the same workflow regardless of matter type.
Choosing the right approach for a specific Time Is Our Greatest Resource 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 Time Is Our Greatest Resource workflow makes sense.
If you’re considering Time Is Our Greatest Resource 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 Time Is Our Greatest Resource, 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.
For guardians ad litem ready to see how VennBoard supports Time Is Our Greatest Resource engagements, visit VennBoard.com.
Further reading
National Center for State Courts
Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement