Your desk is immaculate. There is not one post-it to be seen hanging from your monitor, your wall, or your bathroom mirror. Each day starts with a clear plan of exactly what you need to do – starting with what’s most important. When something new comes at you – you’re able to capture it in the right place so it doesn’t get lost, and you get to it at the right time. You finish the day knowing that you made progress on your most important priorities.
This is not some fanciful delusion – ok, maybe just a little bit.
If you’d like to take back just a little bit of control of your practice, one of the things you’re going to need is a single, simple, organized to-do list. It is an essential element of the system you need to control the chaos and generate a predictable stream of revenue. And maybe even have a clean office.
When my clients are struggling with this idea I suggest they begin thinking about their priorities as these big buckets. Once you’ve got the right things in the right bucket it becomes easier to organize and block your time. Here they are:
- Your Legal Work. This is the generation of legal work, advice and opinions that your clients pay you for. It requires your unique skills, experience and perspectives. And it is an RGA (Revenue Generating Activity)
- Legal Work Done by Others. These are legal matters worked on or completed by others. It is overseeing the work of your paralegal and reviewing the work done by associates or contract staff. It may also include making sure that deadlines, project management around things that require a law degree.
- Business Operations. You’ve got to run the business of your firm that allows you and your team to do the legal work. These are all of the things you didn’t learn how to do in law school. Things like billing, accounting, collections, human resources, information technology, facilities, insurance, business processes improvement, and new service development.
- Marketing & Client Development. This is the work you do to keep the legal work coming in the door and building your business. Few lawyers learned this in law school either. It includes everything from marketing and sales planning, to building awareness of your services, establishing referral relationships, building your brand in the community, and becoming known as a category authority.
- Professional Development. You must continue to grow as a professional if you want to compete and serve clients. This is not just legal skills. You must continue to grow your soft skills from emotional intelligence to communication, speaking, and technology skills.
- Personal, Family & Community. This category holds some of the most important stuff. The things you need to take care of yourself, your family, and things that are important to you outside of legal work and your business.
- Strategy. This category is the place for the longer-term, higher-level things you’re thinking about. It includes your annual and quarterly planning and ideas for growing, shifting, and adapting your practice.
Getting your tasks, including the ones you dream up, into these buckets will allow you to select and prioritize within the larger categories and then allocate time for them as part of your weekly planning process…
-Doug
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