Debrief your Client (Engagements)

LifeHack has a great list of questions has a great list of questions to answer once you get finish a big project that should go on every lawyer's file closing checklist.  You have one of those, don't you?  Here they are:

• What was the outcome of this project?
• What is good about the outcome of this project?
• How do I feel about my performance?
• What mistakes did I make that slowed or otherwise negatively affected the completion of this project?
• How could I avoid making those mistakes in the future?
• What was the best part of the project? What was the worst?
• What strengths did I discover in the completion of this project?
• What new abilities or knowledge have I learned from doing this project?
• What do I wish I had known when I started this project?
• In one or two sentences, what were the lessons of this project?

You should answer these questions (and some others posed in the article) after every client engagement.  However, don't file your answers away with the now-closed client file-- especially the answers to the last two questions.  Instead, keep them in two documents titled "What I need to know before starting a project," and "Lessons I don't need to learn again" that you review every time before accepting a new client.