If you came to Time Is Our Greatest Resource through a single complex case rather than through deliberate study, you’re in the company of most practitioners who eventually built real expertise in the area. Reverse-engineering depth from a hard case is a common career path.
Written for mediators considering Time Is Our Greatest Resource as one of several possible practice directions, with limited time to evaluate which one is worth pursuing.
For mediators, Time Is Our Greatest Resource comes up in the context of helping parties reach agreement, not in producing analytical conclusions for one side. The mediator’s role is structural — surfacing both parties’ interests, identifying common ground, and helping the parties construct durable agreements. Mediators who slip into advisory or evaluative roles on Time Is Our Greatest Resource undermine their effectiveness in subsequent sessions.
The first meeting
The right intake length for a Time Is Our Greatest Resource matter is usually 60 to 90 minutes, conducted in person or by video. Shorter intakes miss the depth required for the engagement to be properly scoped; longer intakes overwhelm the client. Many practitioners follow up the intake conversation with a written summary the client confirms before the engagement letter is sent.
Document the intake. Either contemporaneous notes you keep in the file or a follow-up summary email to the client. Time Is Our Greatest Resource engagements involve enough small decisions across long timelines that working from memory six months in produces errors.
What happens in the middle phase
The middle phase of a Time Is Our Greatest Resource engagement is mostly about data gathering, analysis, and coordination. The data gathering involves requesting documents from the client and (often) from third parties through subpoenas or formal requests. The analysis involves working through what the documents reveal. The coordination involves keeping the attorney and other co-professionals informed.
Communication discipline during the middle phase prevents most of the problems that show up at the deliverable. Practitioners who send the client weekly or biweekly written updates — even short ones — maintain trust and surface issues early. Practitioners who go silent during the analytical work leave the client to imagine what might be happening, which is rarely productive.
What gets produced
The deliverable for a Time Is Our Greatest Resource engagement is the work product everyone will reference for years afterward. It needs to be defensible (your analysis can withstand scrutiny), readable (the client and any non-specialist can understand it), and complete (it addresses what the engagement was scoped to address). The deliverable usually takes 20-40% of the engagement hours; underestimating this consistently produces matters that run over time.
Walk the client through the deliverable before they take it to the attorney or court. The presentation matters; the same report explained well lands differently than the same report dropped over email without context. The walk-through is also where the client’s last questions surface; addressing them in real time prevents follow-up cycles weeks later.
Common variations across matters
Pro bono or reduced-fee Time Is Our Greatest Resource engagements present a specific risk: the temptation to deliver less rigorous work than the practitioner would for a paying client. Pro bono cases that go wrong because of insufficient analytical rigor damage practitioner reputation more than paying cases that go wrong, because the quality gap is visible. For deeper reference, see ABA Model Standards of Conduct for Mediators.
High-conflict matters require different communication and documentation discipline than cooperative ones. In high-conflict Time Is Our Greatest Resource engagements, every communication may eventually be reviewed by opposing counsel or a judge; the practitioner needs to write as if the matter will be litigated, even when it won’t be.
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
Practitioners who handle Time Is Our Greatest Resource repeatedly find that the back-office infrastructure is the difference between a practice that scales and one that absorbs the practitioner. VennBoard provides the structured workspace that lets you focus on the substantive work — the part that actually compounds.
If you’re a mediator building a focus on Time Is Our Greatest Resource and looking for the operational backbone, visit VennBoard.com to see how it fits into your practice.