III. What the Client Is Owed

1. The client is not owed your keystrokes. The client is owed the truth, arrived at by whatever honest means the age provides.

2. If a tool sharpens your seeing, use it. If a tool dulls it, refuse it, though it be fashionable. The measure is not novelty. The measure is fidelity to the one who trusted you.

3. Do not hide your instruments; do not fetishise them either. The carpenter is not asked which chisel he used. He is asked whether the joint holds.

4. Speed is a gift only if honesty travels with it. An answer arriving in a minute is worth nothing if it must be unwound in a year.

5. What was once a rare and expensive competence — the careful reading, the patient synthesis — is now cheap. Do not therefore withhold it. Give it more freely.

6. The professions were never a monopoly on knowledge. They were, at their best, a promise: that behind the advice stood a person who could be held to account. Keep that promise, and the tools become servants. Break it, and no tool will save you.

7. In every matter, imagine the client reading over your shoulder. Would they be reassured by the care, or alarmed by the shortcuts? Write only what would reassure.