Are you feeling overwhelmed, underappreciated, and overworked? Is your career becoming more of a hassle than a dream?
If so, you need to stop what you’re doing and get things in order. If you aren’t keeping things organized, you’re only going to stress yourself out more and more over time.
To learn different organization tips that you can use as a lawyer, keep reading. We’re going to help you get to the bottom of your problem and stay organized.
1. Clear Your Mind
Before you start organizing your law office, you need to clear your mind. If you’re still frantic, you’re not going to get anything done.
Start by thinking about everything you need to get done. Write down your to-dos on a piece of paper or in an organizer. You may even enjoy writing an entry in a journal to talk about what you want to get out of this experience with organizing your law firm.
Before getting started with your to-do list, make sure that you’ve aired out all of your thoughts.
2. Start With Your Desk
Your desk is your sacred space. Whether you work from home or in an office, it doesn’t matter. That desk is your space to do anything and everything you need to get done for work.
So, your desk should work for you.
To be clear, your idea of a perfect desk may not be the same idea that others have. But, it doesn’t matter as long as the idea that you have works for you.
Think about what kind of desk atmosphere you want. Then, get to work making it happen.
Place loose files where they need to go. Clear your desktop of extraneous information. Wipe down your desk with a clean cloth.
Many lawyers find that the majority of their clutter comes from current case files. You may want to consider getting legal tabs to separate legal files by your desk. You can check out great organizational supplies at legalsupply.com.
3. Limit Your Distractions
One way of decluttering your workspace is by limiting distractions from your work technologies.
We know, we know. It’s important to get every call and text from each client you have.
But, do you need to have notifications flooding your screen every two seconds? Absolutely not.
Set up specific notifications for the kinds of alerts that you want to get throughout the day. And, remember, you can put some of them (if not all) on silent.
You don’t need to feel a buzz, hear a bing, and see a notification. In fact, you may check some things so often that you don’t need any regular notifications.
For example, you may not need extensive notifications for your email box. You probably check it often enough.
4. Block Out Your Time
Time blocking is one of the most effective ways to get things done. If you give yourself a set amount of time to get tasks done, you’re more likely to get more done in that time.
This method of planning tricks your brain into thinking that you have to get everything on your to-do list done in that amount of time. So, you naturally become more productive.
5. Improve Your Time Management Skills
It’s no secret that time management matters. As a lawyer, you have to function well in a high-stress, high-performance environment constantly.
At the same time, you have to maintain great time management skills.
Unfortunately, the same time management skills that you used in law school don’t apply to real-life practice. Some of the concepts fly out the window and you’re left to fend for yourself.
In order to improve your time management techniques, you need to understand how you work best.
Do you like focusing on one thing at a time? Do you like switching between tasks quickly and often? How do you approach your daily work schedule?
With this in mind, you can create a schedule that works for you. You may consider using work methods like the Pomodoro Method to allocate time throughout the day.
6. Communicate With Your Clients
Lawyers have to be able to communicate with all of their clients easily and consistently. But, if you’re feeling unorganized, it’s likely that your clients can tell. This can create a high-stress environment that isn’t good for anyone.
In order to communicate effectively with your clients, you need to have a consistent form of communication. This could be online chat, text, video calling, or some other system.
Just make sure that your clients understand how they can reach you and when they should use different methods of communication. This will make it easier on them (and you) when it comes to keeping up with developing cases.
Plus, you can then update your legal files as you’re communicating with these clients rather than shuffling for the documents afterward.
7. Consider Investing in Law Firm Software
During these days and times, law firms are turning to law firm software to keep their legal files in order. Even for firms that aren’t completely digital, this kind of software can be extremely beneficial in ensuring that all files are properly saved, stored, and updated as needed.
Depending on the needs of your law firm, you may consider investing in this kind of software. Rather than having to shuffle for papers in your file cabinet, you could easily locate various case files within seconds.
As long as you develop an online organizational system that works for you and your team, you’re going to be able to access and update legal files quickly. You could even do it while you’re on the phone with your client.
Put These Organization Tips to Use
If you’re a lawyer, you need to put these organization tips to use. You have to think about how your disorganization is affecting your clients and their cases.
It’s time to declutter and organize so that you can take control of your law firm again.
To read more about how to make your life as a lawyer (or other professional) easier, check out the rest of our blog. click here for more articles.