Did you love your first job in law?   

I didn’t. 

My first job was in conveyancing. It was high pressure and I felt like I was always working to someone else’s timeline. What made it worse was that the work was routine. I was doing the same thing over and over, but still feeling stressed. I’d often wake up in the night and panic that I’d forgotten to lodge a contract for duty assessment and would incur penalties, or that I’d settled a property without collecting the duplicate title. (I never did that, by the way!)  

Rather than throw it in, instead I set about improving the system. Every time I did a task I’d ask myself what I needed to change so that I never had to do it again. That meant distilling my work to a clear process – a routine set of tasks that I followed every time, in the same order. I built clever templates so I never had to enter data twice. I made my software responsible for remembering all those things that would keep me awake at night. 

Turns out, I could deliver a better service in half the time and without the stress. I taught others how to deliver the service using my process. I turned work I hated into work I loved.  We saw the biggest growth that practice area had seen in the firm’s 30 years of business.  

Although I didn’t realise it at the time, I’d created my very first productised legal service.  

I’ve now spent almost 10 years designing productised services that result in a better service for our customers and more enjoyable work for our staff. And it all started with that one question. 

So, my question for you. What can you change so you never again have to do the work you don’t enjoy?