How to Address Time Management Issues in Your Law Firm

Many factors can affect your employee’s productivity and your firm’s performance. Proactively addressing performance issues at your law firm is the best way to achieve business success. Time management is one of the major concerns faced by attorneys that affect their efficiency and your firm’s profitability. In this article, we will discuss some of the most common time management mistakes law firms make and tips on how to solve them.

Lack of Prioritisation

Attorneys could have several things to manage every day; therefore, assigning each action a priority is essential. Failing to prioritise tasks can lead to wastage of time, project delays, and even conflicts. Attorneys may fail to prioritise tasks if they are unaware of their responsibilities beforehand or could be a product of unclear priorities from managers, directors, and senior executives. Using task management software can help your lawyers evaluate tasks and better prioritise. 

Having Constant Interruptions

Distractions are a productivity killer, whether from client phone calls and emails, other colleges needing help or even social media notifications. Constant interruptions not only takes up lawyer’s time but also affect their thought process. To overcome this issue, help your employees set dedicated ‘do not disturb’ hours for their workday. Consider training your employees on time management skills and providing them with software tools such as practice management software that can help them stay on track.

Poor Coordination

Poor communication and coordination can reduce your law firm’s productivity, delay cases, and may lead to client conflicts. When a legal case requires more attorneys, each responsible for various aspects of the matter, there can be a breakdown in coordination. Attorneys will eventually waste time if the person with the step before them has yet to complete their work. To overcome this issue, improve communication and collaboration, keep project teams simple and streamlined, and provide necessary resources to your team so they can complete their tasks on time.

Multitasking

Multitasking is not an efficient use of time and research shows that it can harm a lawyer’s productivity and can even increase the risk of malpractice in your firm. Multitasking can affect a lawyer’s ability to focus on a case and make them more distractible and prone to errors. Besides a lawyer's performance and well-being, multitasking can also hurt clients, who pay attorneys for their time and thinking ability.

To overcome the overwhelming temptation to multitask, help lawyers make better schedules that help them stay on track during their workday. Investing in time tracking and case management software such as Lawsyst can help your firm coordinate projects and tasks, track hours, reduce mistakes, and improve overall productivity.

Lack of Resources

Lawyers who lack the proper resources such as time recording software will end up wasting time spinning their wheels. To address this issue, you must invest in resources such as robust practice management software with time tracking, document management, and client billing features that will empower your lawyers to move forward with projects.