The Seven C’s of Great Memos

You don’t need to be James Comey to understand the value of a memo.

Short for “memorandum”, a memo can save your bacon when your memory is called into question. Just as important, a memo created during or immediately after an event will often remind you of errors or omissions in the transaction and give you an opportunity to correct them before the concrete hardens.

There are good memos and there are bad memos. Good memos have at least seven important characteristics:

1. Contemporaneous: the memo should be created as soon as possible after the interaction, and before intervening events push aside a clear recollection. A good rule of thumb is that you create the memo while you still feel the live emotions and mental processes which occurred, no matter how academic or mundane the event. There are also legal rules which will make you glad you penned the memo while the event was fresh.

2. Contextual: Right now you may understand exactly how the meeting or transaction fit in the grander scheme of things, but I can guarantee that in a decade, a year, or even a month, you will be pretty fuzzy about it. This is why it is important to position the story as to time, place and circumstance.

3. Clear: the time to explain precisely what went on is now, not five years from now. As morbid as it may sound, write your memo as though you won’t be around to explain it.

4. Concise: this is a memo, not your memoirs.

5. Coherent: “cohere” means “to stick together”. Your memo needs to have a pattern, an outline, some logic. The morbid rule applies here, too.

6. Careful: with some rare exceptions, just about anything you write is compellable in litigation. That means that your adversary will demand, and get, your memo. He will read it and make hay of it. This does not mean you should not be thorough and detailed, but it does mean that you need to avoid inflammatory and exaggerated language. Get in the habit of writing the accurate memo you will wish to have when you are being cross-examined.

7. Conserve: A memo is of no use if it can’t be found when needed.