Time Management for Busy Attorneys: Eight Key Strategies to Increase Productivity and Reduce Stress in Your Practice

• Jurisdiction: California,United States
• Author: By Kimberly Lee
• Publication year: 2019
• Citation: Vol. 25 No. 4

Time Management for Busy Attorneys: Eight Key Strategies to Increase Productivity and Reduce Stress in Your Practice

By Kimberly Lee

Kimberly Lee owns the Desert Law Group in Indian Wells, California. Her practice focuses in Estate Planning, Probate, Trust Administration and Elder Law. In her spare time, she is an Adjunct Practice Advisor for Atticus, the leading attorney business coaching firm in the country. Kimberly credits Atticus for being a big part of her law firm's success and her ability to live a great life by design.

The process of planning, prioritizing, and deciding how to effectively spend your time sounds simple enough. But there is a subtle art to time management, a calculated formula that enables you to increase productivity and reduce stress in your busy law practice. A pioneer of the self-improvement industry, Paul J. Meyer once said, "Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning and focused effort." To manage your time, you must first ask yourself: what does your current daily planning look like?

You might start the day with the best intentions — an early alarm, a meticulously planned to-do list, an already prepped wholesome breakfast — yet find that you still end up working late. You're rushing from task to task and the to-do list seems to almost always carry over to the following day. For busy attorneys time management is one of the most powerful skills you can master to increase your productivity and reduce your daily stresses.

There are two very distinct styles of time management: reactive versus proactive. A reactive style means that you let other people or clients' emergencies dictate your days. If you find yourself falling off course frequently, you might be succumbing to a reactive style. A proactive style, on the other hand, means that you actively anticipate what may happen and you plan your day and your week accordingly. This style is our focus in this article and we discuss eight key strategies that will help you become a proactive time manager.

STRATEGY #1: WEEKLY TEAM MEETING

Weekly meetings offer the perfect opportunity to fine-tune your time management skills and set the office tone for your team. Always prepare an agenda to help you and the team stay focused on the purpose of the meeting. Distribute the agenda in advance so that meeting goals and a timeframe can be established. Review upcoming due dates, court dates and filing deadlines to make sure things...