No need to say, that time is the biggest resource for any professional. The importance of time becomes even more critical for leaders and managers. Because their plans directly impact the team’s productivity and eventually the whole firm.

The key difference between a successful person and others is nothing but their Time Management.

The last 15-20 years have brought major changes in terms of technology and innovations that have impacted our lives tremendously. Our lives are now significantly fast and easy. But everything has pros and cons. On one side where technology has made us more productive and accurate but, on another side, it’s brought certain disturbances as well.

No matter how punctual we are about being productive, there are still disruptions that appear throughout the day some of these “time wasters” may be tricky and you may not realize the cost of time we all have wasted until it’s too late.

So, without digressing much from our subject line. We’ve identified the following “Key Time Wasters at Law Firms”:

1. Meetings  
2. Social Media 
3. Manual Processes
4. Over Process
5. Repetitive tasks 

1. Meetings
   Seems nowadays meetings are in fashion. Because most often we come to listen ‘I’m in a meeting….’
   
   Sorry! My intention is not to hurt you 🙏.
   
   My objective is to help you to understand, 1) How you could make your meetings productive 2) And, how it could act as a time wasters
   
   To begin with I would like to ask a question: Any idea, how many meetings you or your law firm conducts each day?
   
   Okk! So, you know the count. Whether it’s adequate or not, you’ll get the answer when you’ll finish this point.
   
   So, here are the best practices that could make your meeting more productive:
   
   • Set Clear Goals for your Meetings. Requirement and Purpose.
   • Set the Time Limits of the meeting. It could be 10 min, 20 min or more considering the Purpose.
   • Avoid Unnecessary Meeting. An update meeting (quick, just 10-20 min) once a day is good. Rest, you could plan, if it’s really required. There are many things, that could be addressed just over the call/ message exchange.

   “TIME IS MONEY”, an Overdose of meetings sucks productivity and impacts your schedule. And, an interesting fact, is “Most People are Least Productive During Pre and Post Meeting Hours”.

2. Social Media
   

   Do you know, approximately 60% of the population worldwide uses social media? And their usage is around 2:30 hours every day. Yeah, most people spend 10% time on social media.

   In fact, in the last one-decade social media has appeared as a very powerful invention of the internet. Though its primary goal was networking but now touches almost every aspect, networking, knowledge/information, branding, marketing, and it’s endless. Like anything, this also brings its own pros and cons.
   
   Following are the points that could help you to use social media smartly.
   

   • Define your primary purpose. It’s Social Networking, Branding/Marketing, Or, Knowledge Sharing.
   • Set a limit. Spending 10% of your day on social media is not advisable! If it’s for social networking (no business) the ideal time is 30-45 min per day.
   • Be cautious. What you post here directly or indirectly reaches a mass audience, so be careful about the content and data privacy.
3. Manual System
   One of the biggest disadvantages of manual processes is a dependency on people. It has many consequences in terms of scaling and growing of any organization.
   
   Following are the key points that describe issues with Manual Processes.
   
   • Human Errors & Inconsistency.
   • Large investment on Staff
   • Time Consuming
   • Collaboration and Sharing
   • Lack of Security
4. Over Processes
   We understand the importance of processes and the values it brings to any organization. If it’s ‘Adequate Processes’ it’s good, but if it goes to ‘Over Process’ it could cause great mess too.
   

   Too much of anything is the beginning of a mess.

   Following are the points that could help you to avoid Over Process.
   

   • Avoid so many approvals. Approvals and checking are good but make sure it’s not too much that’s impacting your productivity.
   • Keeping Parallel Systems. Still there are people who don’t believe on technology and hence along with technology people keep a parallel human system.
   • Don’t plan for 100% automation on day one. Plan it phase-wise.
5. Lack of Time Management
   I know it’s a sensitive topic! It offends many when talked about Time Management and routine.
   
   To define correct Time Management first you need to define the category you fall in.
   
   • Individual Contributor. 70-30 rule. 70% of your time should go to your deliverables and the rest to other activities. At this level, it’s easy to keep you productive as you’re responsible for just yourself.
   • Middle Management. 50-50 rule. 50% for your deliverables and 50% for the team.
   • Leadership Role. 80-20 Rule. 80% for the team and the rest for you.

That’s enough Gyan for now! 😊

I hope it should be helpful to you to become more productive.

We’re the Process & Productivity experts for Law Firms. It’s Legalxgen that beats like the heart behind many successful law firms to maximize their productivity and minimize leakage. We help law firms to become 20-30% more productive and profitable.

Not able to believe it?

You should probably take a demo of Legalxgen to see how we do this magic. Reach out to us at relationships@legalxgen.com for a personalized demo.