Time Management Tips for Lawyers

It’s easier to manage your time when you can easily see all your tasks laid out in front of you and when they’re due. Whether you have an app of choice or you still prefer an old-school pen-and-paper system, organizing your tasks is the best way to create accountability for yourself and complete them in a timely, efficient manner.

Legal practice is full of external deadlines, but you should also be setting your own for everything you do, including daily and routine tasks. Determine how much time each task should rationally take and set a deadline for yourself to accomplish it. These should be treated just like court deadlines and added to your calendar or to-do list. You should also give yourself timeframes for accomplishing common tasks like returning phone calls or responding to emails. All of these small but significant steps will help reduce the temptation to procrastinate.

For most lawyers, multitasking is second nature. However, while it may seem like it’s saving you time, it’s actually making you more inefficient. Numerous studies show that juggling multiple tasks at once makes you more inefficient and less effective on any one of them. So, while you may think you’re getting more done by multitasking, you’re actually not.

If you’re like most lawyers, it’s probably hard for you to say no to work. You might even think you’re not allowed to. When you take on too many things, though, you prevent yourself from doing any of them up to the standards your clients expect. If you don’t have the capacity for more work, try to turn down additional projects. If you have too many tasks and can’t handle them all, ask for additional staffing or delegate tasks to junior attorneys and support staff. Even if you think you can do it best, there are times when you just can’t do everything yourself.

Tech has revolutionized the practice of law. The sea of software and apps designed to make your life easier and your work more efficient is seemingly endless. Be sure to take advantage of those advancements and learn to incorporate technology into your routine in ways that eliminate unnecessary work and speed up manual processes.