This is for every practitioner who’s ever paid for peace and been invoiced for drama instead, writes Rebecca Ward, MBA.
The paradox of delegation
Delegation is meant to buy back time. In reality, it often buys aggravation. You hire someone to make life easier, and, somehow, without ever refusing, arguing, or openly defying you, they make it harder. The breaches are minor: a document misnamed, a report missing page numbers, an eye-roll masked as fatigue. Harmless in isolation; corrosive in combination. It isn’t sabotage; it’s apathy in slow motion.
The courtroom parallel
For those unfamiliar with the courtroom language behind the title, when a witness becomes evasive or uncooperative, counsel may seek leave to treat them as hostile, allowing more direct and pointed questioning. It is a procedural tool for handling someone who refuses to meet basic obligations in an otherwise straightforward process.
Most principals would happily borrow such a mechanism for people management. In law, the smallest lapse can ripple into chaos: a misfiled brief, an unreturned call, a misdated affidavit, the wrong version sent to the other side.
Precision as professional currency
The law runs on detail. One overlooked attachment or misnamed file can unravel hours of advocacy. The partner who re-proofs a letter at midnight isn’t obsessive; they are protecting the firm’s credibility.
What frustrates principals is not the slip-ups but the indifference, the quiet shrug of “meh, near enough”, the reasoning of “Well, it wasn’t in my KPIs,” or the convenient “You didn’t specifically tell me to do that.” Accuracy is not pedantry; it is respect. Refilling the copier, rinsing a mug, and arriving five minutes early instead of five minutes late, none of these tasks requires legal training. What they signal is whether someone understands they are part of an ecosystem where small acts of responsibility compound into trust.
Micro-behaviours that corrode competence
Most underperformance doesn’t arrive dramatically; it arrives through small acts of disengagement. A task done just well enough to avoid correction. A deadline technically met, but without care. The strategic ambiguity of “I thought you meant next Friday,” delivered with just enough innocence to evade accountability.
These aren’t HR-level offences. There are no outbursts, no misconduct, nothing that fits neatly into a policy. But the accumulation is corrosive. Small acts of apathy force conscientious people into constant vigilance. They embolden the employees who skate by and drain the ones who show up. It is professionalism diluted, a slow leak of disengagement that tells the leader, your standards are optional.
The energy cost of caring
Firm owners, partners, and senior counsel are especially vulnerable because they care. They built something from nothing, long nights, unpaid hours, and an unrelenting pursuit of quality. They don’t expect perfection; they expect reciprocity. When that’s met with indifference, disappointment fills the space. You can’t formally reprimand someone for not caring enough, yet that is precisely the injury.
What begins as mild frustration becomes chronic vigilance. Suddenly, you’re triple-checking work, cleaning the communal kitchen, redoing simple admin tasks, and wondering why you outsourced in the first place. Delegation, meant to create space for thinking and billables, quietly becomes another full-time job.
The tyranny of the trivial
Nothing unravels a conscientious professional faster than a drip-feed of minor excuses.
“I was late again because the trains were cancelled.”
“I didn’t refill the paper because I was in a rush.”
“I left my dishes because I had to get back to my desk.”
And sometimes there’s not even an excuse, just the silent assumption that someone else will pick up the slack.
This is the quiet erosion of standards, the feeling of being professionally gaslit by mediocrity. Each lapse chips away until all that’s left is that fatal precursor to conflict: “You know what?” A phrase that has never, in the history of heated conversations, ended well.
Lessons beyond the payroll
This dynamic echoes through every layer of the profession. Between solicitors and barristers, it’s the late brief, the unacknowledged email, and the quiet presumption that someone else will catch the error. Between managers and juniors, it’s the polite dodge, the circling back without actually doing the work.
Even among students and interns, it’s the failure to see the infrastructure that keeps a practice functioning: the tidy meeting room, the correctly labelled folders, the notes that still make sense three weeks later. Understanding the cost of unreliability is part of becoming a professional. Law isn’t sustained by brilliance alone; it is sustained by consistency.
The moment of reckoning
Eventually, patience expires. The principal stops explaining, the invoice stops renewing, and the silence becomes deliberate. The boundary is drawn not with anger, but with absence; those who weaponise charm or mediocrity often mistake tolerance for weakness. But the conscientious are slow to boil and quick to close the file. When they do, it is final. At that point, you can almost feel the decision settle in, permission granted, witness declared hostile.
Competence as courtesy
The moral here is not cynicism; it is calibration. Competence is not just a skill; it is a social contract. It says, I take your time seriously enough to meet my obligations properly. The best firms and chambers aren’t powered by brilliance but by reliability, people who deliver what they promise, when they promise it, without needing applause. If the profession has a performance-management crisis, it isn’t in ethics or advocacy; it’s in the vanishing art of giving a damn.
Guarding the finite
Those who lead must guard their two scarcest resources, time and trust, with the same vigilance they give to client privilege. When help becomes a hindrance, the cost is not only financial; it is emotional, reputational, and cumulative. Delegation remains necessary, but discernment is survival. Hire carefully, supervise wisely, and if the pattern repeats, grant yourself permission, at least metaphorically, to treat the witness as hostile.
Rebecca Ward is an MBA-qualified management consultant with a focus on mental health. She is the managing director of Barristers’ Health, which supports the legal profession through management consulting and psychotherapy. Barristers’ Health was founded in memory of her brother, Steven Ward, LLB.
