That second set of eyes sitting just outside the door: your secretary.

Secretaries are smart, often excelled at English in school, and know there from their from they’re. Using your secretary as a proofreader enhances your practice three ways:

1. you send out better work to the court, to the client, to opposing counsel;

2. you spend less time looking for typos, homonyms, and nonsense;

3. you make an important member of your team feel included.

Here’s some irony: An author has an agent, a publisher, and at least two professional editors, all of whom carefully review a manuscript (which arrives already tightly written), and all of whom, plus the author, share a few hundred thousand dollars, maybe a million or two, if that manuscript becomes a bestseller. But when a lawyer writes a brief with millions or hundreds of millions or billions of dollars riding on it, no one else even looks at it. Someone should. Typos and grammar slips tell the judge, the client, and opposing counsel you don’t care about your case.

Every lawyer needs an editor, and you already have one, just outside your door.

P.S. My partners and the engineers will hang me by my thumbs if I do not mention that WordRake editing software can also be that second set of eyes and see ways to improve your brief or memorandum that even your secretary cannot see.