Running your own firm is demanding. The incessant queries from clients and colleagues, last-minute changes to a case or a file, and hours spent in court or meetings can all have you wondering if there’s any way to work better.
While having a lot going on at once can be stimulating, getting through it all efficiently can prove to be a major challenge. If you feel like you’re getting nowhere despite the long hours, these five hacks can help you boost productivity and reach your full potential.
1. Create an Email Schedule
Instead of responding to every email as it comes in, block off time every day to go through your inbox. Set aside 30 or 45 minutes twice a day to check and respond to messages, and then focus on other work for the rest of the day. Remember: clients want a timely reply, not necessarily an instantaneous one.
2. Don’t Hold Meetings on Mondays
As everyone knows, it’s best to get your most important work done first thing in the morning. Take that a step further by using Mondays to focus on more in-depth work like preparing or updating client case files and planning your marketing strategies. Save the meetings for the rest of the week.
3. Create a Kanban Board
Visualizing your caseload can make it much easier to identify bottlenecks and address them. All you need is a whiteboard, a marker, and post-it notes. Create columns for each stage of the case progression. On a post-it note, write the name of each case. As cases progress, place post-its in the appropriate columns. If you see too many of them in certain columns, you know where you need to focus.
4. Dedicate Fridays to Calls
By Friday, you’ve gotten all of your creative and labor-intensive work done, or at least at a manageable level. Now it’s time to catch up on calls. You can dedicate Friday to connecting with clients: with everything else out of the way, you’re able to focus on the conversations and make them more meaningful and successful.
5. Create a Shutdown Routine
At the end of the day, you should have a shutdown routine to wrap up loose ends and decompress. Before leaving the office, take 15 to 20 minutes to complete tasks like the following:
- Review your email one last time
- List tomorrow’s priorities
- Tie up other loose ends
Close the laptop, step away from your desk, and head out!
Conclusion
By scheduling obligations and reducing the amount of time it takes to complete certain tasks, you will be able to spend more time on client acquisition, legal research and analysis, and other duties that bring the firm forward. Managing your workload more efficiently can also reduce your stress levels, making you a better lawyer- all the more reason to make productivity a priority.
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