Task(s) at Hand: Tools for Managing Your Practice Responsibilities

Most attorneys feel overwhelmed by everything they need to do.  Especially for solo and small firm lawyers, this can be crushing. 

 

It helps to take a step back, redefine your goals, reset your tasks, and focus on what you need to do now.  For many attorneys, they’re just trying to do everything at once, which is impossible; and so, they end up multitasking themselves into extinction. 

 

Of course, while establishing an order of operations is immensely helpful, you still need a good system, through which to manage all your tasks, and to stagger them in the order you want. 



It’s likely that you already have a task management system in place – in fact, pretty much every productivity (email) software, or law practice management system has one built in.  But, you may find those lacking, in terms of the task functionality.  If you do, there are a lot of great task management tools, that focus on that one operation, which you could look to. 

 

Those include: Trello, Asana, Notion and Monday (not an exhaustive list).  There are free options available.  Some task managers offer Kanban-style arrays; some are list-based systems; and, some allow you to toggle back and forth between the two.  And, depending on your email or case management system, you may be able to integrate your task management system, potentially via a product like Zapier – for when a direct API connection is not available. 

 

. . . 

 

If you need to start focusing on the task(s) at hand, we can help. 

Through a unique partnership between the bar association and Jared Correia's Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, National Creditors' Bar Association members now have access to experienced law practice management consultants at a special discount rate. To get started, visit Red Cave's NCBA landing page, and start running your law practice like a business.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Top Shelf: How to Maximize Lawyer Staff in a Modern Law Firm

Image
Broadly speaking, lawyers take on too much.  You know: at work, emotionally.  They’re probably also trying to carry too many grocery bags into the house at one time.  You know how it is.     This, of course, leads to a whole host of problems, including that attorneys have higher incidences of alcohol and drug dependence, as well as depression, than does the general population .  Maybe you already knew that.  But, the fact is that this also has a direct effect on how much a lawyer can make. Hear me out: Because lawyers try to do everything, and to do everything perfectly, they’re also more prone than the general population to take on more work than they need to.  For example, they’re unwilling to delegate, including to paralegal and administrative staff, but also to other attorneys.  That means that lawyers end up being chief cook and bottlewasher, rather than focusing on the high-end work (strategy , client engagement), that they get paid th...
Read more

Transfer Portal: Sharing Files Securely is a Piece of Cake Now

Image
If you’re still sharing files with clients, referral sources and other attorneys, via email attachment – or, heaven forfend: fax! – you need to step up your game .  Email is an inherently unsecure technology; so, if you’re sending confidential information via email, you need to secure that information, by encrypting it – at the document level, or at the system level .  But, that takes additional time and effort, and cost s more.   Instead, why not share confidential information through a secure , encrypted platform, th rough which the person who is to receive the information logs into, thereby bypassing the email problem, where that information passes through several servers (some of which may be unencrypted), before reach ing its final destination .  With a client portal, your document stays where it is (safely encrypted), and your recipient comes in to get it.     Now, you can share files and documents via document storage programs in this fashi...
Read more

Hiring Percentage: What is the Law Firm Hit Rate for Bringing on Staff?

Image
Some lawyer s get burned hiring staff, whether it’s legal assistant s , paralegals or other attorneys .  But, just because you miss out once, in trying to hire somebody, doesn’t mean you should give up forever .  There are distinct advantages to bring ing on employees, including increased control over work product + improved revenue generation models.   In my experience, I’ve found that law firms connect on a successful hire (across all employee categories) about 40% of the time .  That may seem like a low number , but it represents about a 50% hit rate, meaning that every other hire should yield a viable staffperson , who’ll stay on between 3-5 years – which is not too bad, in the modern economy.     Putting that into baseball terms, which folks often do when trying to rationalize failure : your hiring batting average as a law firm, is about equivalent to Ted Williams’ 1941 season , when he was the last baseball player to hit .400 over a full seas...
Read more