Effective time management is crucial to staying sane when working as a paralegal. With competing deadlines, client emergencies, and constant interruptions, it can feel like your job is more about managing chaos than legal work.

Protecting your workday against the unpredictable is hard. To reduce the number of fires you put out in your day, here are some time management tips.

Task Triaging

Task triaging helps organize your day right from the start. It’s tempting — and I sometimes fall into this trap — to do an easy task right away just to get it off your list. However, completing too many easy tasks can turn your important, time-sensitive tasks into fires to put out.

The best way to fight this is task triaging: categorize your tasks and tackle them by importance. Triaging also lets you batch-process tasks, minimizing interruptions and improving productivity.

Implementing the Eisenhower Matrix is the most recommended method for this. This sorts your work into for categories, including:

• Urgent and important. These are your do-immediately tasks. These typically include imminent deadlines: court filings, client emergencies, etc. — anything due today.
• Important but not urgent. This is the meat and potatoes of your work. Research, drafting motions, and trial preparation go into this category. Scheduling this out and getting it done proactively keeps it from going into the urgent category.
• Urgent but not important. These are correspondence or interruptions. This includes emails, a phone call, or any “quick favor” that can probably wait. You may be able to delegate these tasks; otherwise, batch them and do them in a time block so they don’t interrupt your other work.
• Neither urgent nor important. These are unnecessary tasks or distractions. These are non-case-related items like organizational newsletters to read and non-vital meetings. These items don’t have to be done today, this week, or on any certain schedule.

Schedule Your Work in Time Blocks

Now that you have your action items in order, you can plan out your day. Time blocking, setting aside time for specific tasks or individual projects, will reduce distractions and context-switching.

 Distractions and context-switching are the bane of productivity. It can take up to 20 minutes to refocus afterward. If that happens several times a day, you lose almost 2 hours of work to readjustment.

Essentially, you will be unavailable during the time block period for uninterrupted concentration. Think of it as being “in a meeting” with your task. This focused work improves productivity and efficiency.

• Make time for reviewing. Make sure each block has enough time to review your work before moving on to the next task.
• Add buffer time. Schedule in some buffer time between each task or block to handle interruptions or “quick favor” activities.
• Take breaks. Remember to add breaks in your day. If you’re mentally exhausted, you’re less efficient and productive.
• Make it a routine. Share your schedule with your team so they understand when you’re focusing on casework.  
• Reduce distractions. Silence notifications and avoid checking your email.

Utilize Legal Tech and Automation

Legal technology can be your best friend for time management. Rapidly evolving legal tech improves both the business and practice of law. You can complete routine tasks faster and more easily, from entering billable time to preparing documents.

The goal with your legal tech stack is to focus your time on substantive legal work and let the tech do as much of the routine work as possible.

• Watch your tech stack. Tools that take effort to maintain, require duplicate information entry, or don’t integrate with other software can be a time liability instead of an asset.
• Utilize templates. A library of email, letter, and memo templates gives you a strong starting point for communications. Ideally, the template will pull data from your case management system to save time and reduce errors.
• Track your time. Along with time blocking, time-tracking software can make it easy to log and track billable hours. You can also automate invoicing.
• Use it to manage the calendar. Accurate deadline calendaring is essential to your workflow. Good legal tech will automatically calendar deadlines and reminders. Great tech will integrate them with your task list.
• Delegate and collaborate. Legal tech helps everyone know who is working on which case or task. If a task is handed off to another team member, the tech can reflect the change.

Communication Protocols

One of the biggest pain points that interrupts your workflow and slows your day is status requests. Whether it’s an attorney checking in to see where you are on a task or a client looking for an update on their case — the disruption throws off your focus and costs time.

Clear communication protocols help reduce these interruptions and improve efficiency. Protocols should include both internal and external communications. Communication protocols include:

• Manage client expectations. Include communication protocols for clients in your firm’s Terms of Representation or Engagement Letters. These should include:
  • Standard office hours available
  • Standard response time (24 hours/48 hours)
• Use task tracking tools. If your case management software doesn’t include task management, use a tool like Trello or Asana to track tasks. Attorneys can check the status without interrupting your work.
• Have regular review meetings. Sometimes the old-fashioned way works best. Have an in-person check-in weekly or bi-weekly to keep everyone on the same page.
• Set a specific time in your day for correspondence. Block time in your day to handle correspondence. This lets you batch-process and avoid multiple interruptions or back-and-forth between tasks.

Conduct an Occasional Time Audit

A great approach to time management is to step back occasionally and identify pain points in your day. The goal is to identify patterns that disrupt your workflow and proactively adjust your strategies to mitigate them.

Take 20 minutes at the end of your week and ask yourself a few questions to see if some improvements can be made:

• Does a task take up more time than it should?
• Do unexpected interruptions disrupt my schedule?
• Can any of my tasks be automated or sped up with a template?
• Are there pending deadlines that I worry about?

 Adjusting your strategy as you go allows you to improve your efficiency.  

Conclusion

Being proactive with your time management strategies will reduce stress and improve your workday. It’s a process that takes time to perfect and can be adjusted to your personal working style.

Regaining control of your day will lead to a calmer and more satisfying legal career.