In his bestselling book The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, physician and New Yorker writer Atul Gawande argues that checklists are essential to reducing errors and increasing efficiency. He points to the airline industry's reliance on flight-related checklists - and its remarkable safety record - as evidence of the power of checklists to make processes work, and argues that the medical profession should expand the use of checklists to save lives and improve outcomes.

"The natural extension to the legal field is that lawyers must use checklists as much as possible," writes Kerry Lavelle in the June issue of The Bottom Line, newsletter of the ISBA Standing Committee on Law Office Management and Economics. "For example, why not have a definitive checklist for a residential real estate closing? A commercial real estate closing? An asset purchase agreement? Stock purchase agreement? Commercial lease review?"

Nor is the value of checklists limited to transactional processes, Lavelle writes. "Imagine having a compelling and detailed checklist, or litigation handbook, specific to your firm's [litigation] 'process' encompassing the local rules where every new attorney and attorney thereafter would need to understand in the process for litigation," he writes. Find out more in the July Illinois Bar Journal.