Reading three CLE articles on First Things First 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.
This piece is for mediators who already have the basics and are deciding whether to make First Things First a focus area.
Mediation involving First Things First often benefits from explicit education for both parties on the substantive issues before negotiation begins. A mediator who spends 20 minutes walking both parties through the basics of First Things First levels the information asymmetry that often blocks productive discussion. This is education, not advocacy — and it’s a core mediator skill.
Get the engagement letter right
The engagement letter should specify what’s not in scope as clearly as what is. First Things First engagements often sit adjacent to areas the client will assume are covered — tax questions, custody questions, investment questions — that aren’t. Naming these explicitly at scoping eliminates the most common source of mid-engagement misunderstanding.
For First Things First matters, define the deliverable at scoping. Will you produce a written report? A memorandum? An oral presentation to the case team? A draft document for negotiation? The same matter with a different deliverable is functionally a different engagement; pretending the deliverable will ‘become clear as we go’ produces worse outcomes than naming it upfront.
Keeping the case file usable
Build a third-party document tracker for every First Things First engagement. What you’ve requested, when, from whom, what’s arrived, what’s still outstanding. This kind of tracking is unsexy but it’s the single most common reason matters run over timeline.
Versioning matters on First Things First deliverables. Practitioners who maintain a clean version history (draft 1, draft 2, etc., with dates and changes noted) produce deliverables faster and can show their work if anyone questions a specific choice.
The case team and how to run it
Strong relationships with the family-law attorneys in your market are the single most important asset for ongoing First Things First flow. Most matters come through these relationships. Practitioners who reliably produce good work for the attorneys they coordinate with get repeated referrals; those who produce work that creates more problems for the attorney lose the referrals quickly.
Conflicts of interest in First Things First are subtler than in general family-law practice. The mediator’s engagement letter usually names a single client, but the analysis affects multiple parties’ interests. Practitioners who think through the implications carefully — and document them — avoid the surprise discovery that they have an undisclosed conflict three months into a matter.
Stay current with the field
Reading the trade publications that cover First Things First matters more than most practitioners give it credit for. Thirty minutes a week, sustained across a year, produces a working sense of where the field is moving. Practitioners who do this find themselves citing relevant developments in client conversations and case strategy; those who don’t fall behind quietly. For deeper reference, see ABA Family Law Section resources.
Conference attendance compounds over years. Practitioners who attend the same family-law conference annually develop both substantive depth (the sessions accumulate) and relational depth (the same colleagues show up every year). The first year produces little; the fifth year is where the network and the knowledge become genuine assets.
How the closing affects the next referral
If the engagement produced a written deliverable that the client will share with attorneys, courts, or other professionals, make sure the closing version is clearly marked as final and dated. Drafts have a way of escaping into the broader case file; an unambiguously labeled final version eliminates the most common source of post-engagement confusion.
How a First Things First engagement closes affects the next several referrals more than how it opens. Practitioners who send a clean closing letter — recapping what was delivered, confirming any open items the client should know about, formally concluding the engagement — produce stronger ongoing relationships with both clients and referral sources than those who let engagements trail off ambiguously.
The practitioners we see succeed in First Things First share a few habits: they show up consistently at the same professional events, they invest in templates and infrastructure, they keep peer relationships current, and they treat each matter as a chance to refine their approach.
How VennBoard fits in
VennBoard helps mediators build the operational backbone First Things First engagements require — engagement letters that handle the scoping conversation in writing, case files that stay organized across long matters, communication tools that keep the broader case team coordinated, and the infrastructure that lets the practitioner focus on the analytical work rather than the administrative drag.
For mediators ready to see how VennBoard supports First Things First engagements, visit VennBoard.com.