Triple Threat: 3 Ways to Increase Your Personal Efficiency

Despite what you hear, time never appears to be on your side. 

 

And certainly, everyone is looking to maximize their time.  In terms of business management, that means that you’re always looking to increase the volume of cases you can take on, which you can do by increasing your utilization rate.  But, this all starts with achieving a level of personal efficiency, because: if you can’t be efficient yourself, it’s very difficult to ask others, including your staff and associates, to be more efficient than you are – you’ve got to be the leader, in that context. 


 

So, if you’re struggling in becoming more efficient, here are three tips you can take to the bank: 

 

(1) Wrestling with email is a significant time waster for most lawyers.  Lots of attorneys have thousands of emails in their inbox, which is impossible to manage.  And, it makes it seem like Inbox Zero is light years away.  But, even the gnarliest of email inboxes can be cleaned out with a systematic approach that turns unanswered emails into tasks, or allows you to quickly delete or respond to those emails that do not require a long tail.  Using Getting Things Done (GTD) for GMail or Outlook may be a viable option for you. 

 

(2) Generally speaking, people try to multitask in distracting environments – especially during the continuing pandemic.  But, multitasking is not a real thing.  You can only focus on one task at a time.  And, if you can eliminate (or, at least, reduce) distractions, you can focus on that single task more effectively.  So, if every day (or at least most days) you can find a block of two hours, to work steadily on individual tasks, uninterrupted, in a distraction-free environment, you’ll likely be shocked at how much you can get done during these ‘power hours’ – especially if that’s a significant departure from the way you normally operate. 

 

(3) You know all those notifications you get: the pings, bings and popups that make up your business life.  Well, turn them off.  Seriously, they feed urgency addition, and cause you to lose focus.  And, it’s worse if you act on a notification: click on one, and you’re off-task for as many as 18 minutes. 

 

. . . 

 

If you want to get more efficient, spending a focused hour talking with us can help! 

Through a unique partnership between the Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar and Jared Correia’s Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, Maine attorneys have access to experienced law practice management consultants at a special discounted rate. 

To get started, visit Red Cave’s landing page for Maine attorneys, and start running your law practice like a business.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pay It Forward: How to Incentivize Attorneys and Staff Beyond Salary

Image
Many law firm owners are comfortable just paying out a salary .  And, that can work, for sure .  But, if you want to drive revenue within your law firm, it makes sense to look at bonusing attorneys and staff in ways that will incentivize your employees to generate or close more cases for the firm, which will lead to additional revenue. Obviously, this is a bit easier for attorney staff, since lawyers can share fees with each other, which makes it easier to create a direct incentive plan .  But, for staff , you can bonus them without sharing fees, including for converting clients from leads, for example, by doing things like offering a $50 bonus for each lead closed, potentially in a certain time frame .   This is the same method that lead generation services use to get paid by law firms, without sharing fees.     But, the place that law firm owners can really make money here is by using origination fees to bonus their attorney staff .  Law firms ...
Read more

Perfect Timing: New Calendaring Tools Make It Easy to Connect with Leads and Clients

Image
Lawyers tend to be inefficient, and have difficulty engaging both leads and clients.  These hurdles are apparent when it comes to the scheduling process.  Attorneys and staff onboard leads for meetings, and schedule appointments with existing clients, via strings of emails -- and, delayed response s only extend the conversation, and the time frame.  And, while this is detrimental for client s (who demand speed and convenience), it’s even worse for leads, who may never convert, if they’re not onboarded simply, and easily.   The good news is that modern technology tools allow for scheduling without the intervention of humans, including you and your staff.  That means that you can say goodbye to all those extra emails, and wasted time.  Programs like Calendly and Acuity allow clients to book appointments directly onto a law firm or lawyer’s calendar, and include buffers and controls, so users aren’t overwhelmed.  LawTap offers a similar tool focu...
Read more

Close Sesame: Three Things You Can Do To Improve Your System Security Right Know

Image
It’s 202 4 , and everybody is still kind of bad with passwords.  Many passwords, in fact, still contain the word . . . password .  That can’t be good.     However, there are three simple moves that you can make to ensure that your passwords are more impressive, and difficult to hack .  That will, in turn, better secure the systems that you are using passwords to protect – which, at this juncture , are pretty much all your systems.   Step one, is to generate stronger passwords .  You can try passphrases .  You can use a password management tool, that will generate more secure passwords for you, so you don’t have to .  And, you can ensure that you’re not using the same password across multiple programs, which is dangerous, because if one gets hacked – they all get hacked.     Step two, is to lean into password managers .  Not only can those systems generate strong passwords for you, you can also use these tools to mana...
Read more