Once you know what right looks like, and where the wasted time hides, you can tell in two seconds whether someone took their sweet time at your expense.
26 July 2026
I sharpen our household knives. I iron our laundry. I polish my shoes. I wash and wax our cars, and change their oil.
All by hand.
And I time myself doing each.
Ironing a polo shirt takes three minutes, five for a long-sleeve shirt. Washing a VW hatchback takes twenty-five minutes, a Wrangler thirty.
I do each myself for two reasons: to make sure it is done right, and to know what right looks like when done efficiently. The right soap and water pressure on the cars. The right motor oil viscosity. The right torque spec. The right heat on silk, through a press cloth. Shoes conditioned, five minutes to absorb, before polish. Twenty strokes along a whetstone at fifteen degrees for the high-carbon stainless blades, fifteen strokes on a diamond plate at seventeen degrees for high-vanadium steel, then the strop, leather then nylon, finished with a razor-thin coat of oil.
I am not suggesting you take up knife sharpening. Doing it myself is not the point; the skill of knowing what right looks like and where the wasted time hides, built over decades, is. Once you have that skill, you can tell in two seconds whether a job was done properly, whether it was rushed, or whether someone took their sweet time at your expense. And I take note every single time.
That is exactly why I started a legal efficiency consultancy, Ergane (after the goddess Athena, at her most industrious). To help founders, CXOs, and owners trim their legal functions while still doing it right.
Ask your lawyer how long a custom SaaS MSA draft will take. You get a guess, and treat it as definitive. They say a week or two, and that’s that. The guess becomes the standard, and an unchecked standard becomes a headcount request, and then another.
But that guess is itself an unknown stacked on several more. How efficient is each lawyer? Who does which part, and why? What tools do they use, and how are they configured? Where are the bottlenecks, and how can they be removed?
Every one is knowable. Over the last six months I worked on 455 legal documents, 5,088 pages. A SaaS agreement, across every pass, takes me about six minutes per page. Six minutes a page, twenty-five pages, four and a half passes. Eleven hours of work. Block eleven hours on the calendar, and bam, you have an ETA you can commit to.
But almost nobody measures, and the few who do don’t know what to do with the results.
That is where Ergane shines. I examine your legal team’s people, processes, tools, and configurations, then establish (a) how long the work takes today, (b) what can be streamlined, and (c) a plan to get there.
Before I buy another kitchen knife, I make sure the ones I have are cutting at their finest. Only then do I know whether I truly need another one.
Shouldn’t you do the same before you hire another lawyer or pay for more legal technology?
Let me first make sure your lawyers are cutting at their finest.
Visit erganelegal.com for a free consultation.
Ergane. One weaver. The work of a team.
A scoped diagnostic, priced before it starts, with your real workflow on the table. You'll deal with Damian directly. Tell him where it's stuck, and he'll come back to you with scope and a number.