Time Is Our Greatest Resource doesn’t get written about often, which is partly why the practitioners who own it tend to keep owning it. The information barrier to entry is real even when the technical barrier isn’t.
Written for mediators thinking about how to position around Time Is Our Greatest Resource for the next three to five years, not the next quarter.
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
A useful intake habit: ask the client to articulate, in their own words, what they’re hoping the engagement will produce. The answer reveals where the client’s expectations align with what Time Is Our Greatest Resource engagements actually deliver and where they don’t. Closing the gap before the engagement starts saves significant friction during the matter.
The intake conversation for Time Is Our Greatest Resource matters does most of the work of the engagement. Practitioners who run a structured intake — covering the client’s objectives, the timeline they’re working with, the co-professionals on the case, the data and documents needed, and the form the deliverable will take — produce engagement letters that hold their shape through the matter. Practitioners who run an unstructured intake produce engagement letters that get rewritten or absorb scope creep silently. For deeper reference, see ABA Family Law Section resources.
The body of the engagement
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.
Analytical work during the middle phase often produces interim findings that affect the engagement scope. A finding the client didn’t anticipate may open new questions; a finding consistent with expectations may close lines of inquiry. The engagement letter should anticipate these scope adjustments and provide a path for handling them without requiring full re-papering.
The deliverable
Most Time Is Our Greatest Resource deliverables follow a consistent format that practitioners refine over multiple matters. An executive summary at the top. Background and scope. Methodology. Findings. Conclusions and recommendations. Appendices with supporting documentation. Practitioners who maintain a template they refine engagement by engagement produce stronger deliverables faster than those who reinvent the format each time.
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.
When the standard doesn’t apply
Time Is Our Greatest Resource engagements vary along a few predictable dimensions: client sophistication (institutional client vs. unsophisticated individual), case complexity (single straightforward question vs. multiple intertwined issues), opposing-side cooperation (cooperative vs. adversarial), and timeline pressure (negotiated timeline vs. court-imposed deadlines). Each dimension affects how the standard engagement pattern needs to adjust.
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.
Practitioners interested in seeing VennBoard’s case-management infrastructure for Time Is Our Greatest Resource work can learn more at VennBoard.com.