• It is the bane of every employee, lawyer or recruiter’s existence when preparing employment advertisements. As they say, ‘the devil is in the detail’.

  Attention to detail has been defined as thoroughness in accomplishing a task through concern for all the areas involved, no matter how small. We imagine you arere all familiar with the need for and the consequences of a lack of attention to detail. We don’t propose to go into that here.

  But how do you improve your attention to detail?

  Here are 4 practical tips to improve your attention to detail:

• 1.         Read and re-check your documents - Sometimes the simplest solution is the most practical. There is no substitute for hard work and even in documents filed in Court, mistakes appear. Whilst there is no guarantee that reading it 5 times will make it perfect, the document is likely to be 40% better than after reading it 3 times.

• 2.         Read the document you are referring to - Every time you refer to another document in your communications including emails, letters or submissions make sure to have it open in front of you. This should be applied vice versa as well, if your opposition refers to a document open it and have it in front of you. You will never misquote a document again and you will pick up every time your opponent does, which could make all the difference.

• 3.         Look up the relevant section – Even if you have read it 50 times that day, can perfectly quote it, or you can see it when you close your eyes, still look up the section whenever you or another person refers to it. No one’s memory is perfect, and you will avoid silly mistakes in exchange for an extra 40 seconds of effort.

• 4.         Double check the document you are enclosing - Open the document as it is attached to your email or before sending in a letter. A quick scroll through a document to be enclosed within a letter or attached to an email will pick up any formatting errors, subject line errors, lack of a signature and any one of 146 possible mistakes. Further, you can then be certain of what will be received.

Most of the time these things will not affect the outcome of a matter in the real sense but one day they may, and you will not find out until after the fact. Therefore, do not make the mistake of taking a short cut because it may save time. Your client will appreciate it being done right the first time, rather than there being a mistake that may not be found until it is too late.

Author: Ben O'Brien