The Power of Planning
By Jim Calloway, Director, OBA Management Assistance Program

“Plan your work, work your plan.” — not-so-ancient maxim

Most everyone understands the power of good planning and the consequences of poor planning. But taking time for good planning is often difficult for time-challenged lawyers. That is not to say that lawyers are not good planners. In my estimation, they are among the best. But after spending their primary efforts crafting the exacting details of a client’s estate plan or mapping out a complex litigation strategy, sometimes long range planning for the law firm or completing the law firm’s marketing or succession plan is put off for another day.

In a similar vein, we all understand many of the basics of good time management. Organize. Prioritize. Make lists. Delegate where appropriate. Good planning of a workday will lead to more tasks accomplished that day.

The fact that we understand the concepts does not mean that we practice them well at all times. Most of us would admit to wasting time or being disorganized at times. It is a part of the human condition. For those of us who work desk jobs in offices, there is often the nagging feeling that we could do better and handle things more efficiently.

Spring is most often thought of as the season of beginnings. But September is a time of beginnings as well. The academic year begins for students (and for parents). The OBA-NET has already had the first posts about college football. Summer vacations are behind us and we find ourselves plunging back into our routines. As the focus moves from pool parties and fun travel to the more normal schedule, it seems to be a good time to set out a smorgasbord of organization and planning related ideas. These are short and simple ideas and we hope that they can be used by even the most busy lawyer to improve their practices.

We invite you to pick one or two of these ideas to sample in your office. But just like a real smorgasbord or feast, you may only want to sample a few of the delicacies. Trying them all at once might prove to be more than you can easily digest.

1. Make a list

We all make lists. From grocery lists to checklists for legal projects, most of us are generally pretty big on lists. Lawyers often mention their daily to-do lists in conversation. Do you have a written to-do list on your desk right now with all of your pending tasks listed? A few readers are now furrowing their brows at this question, wondering how any lawyer could possibly function without a to-do list on the desk at all times. Others are convinced that they have their to-do’s firmly committed to memory with no need to reduce them to writing. Others are wincing because they recall an earlier time when they lived by the to-do list, but they now seem to have fallen out of the habit. My guess is that most readers have a to-do list, but there are additional important tasks that have not made the list today.

Many have observed that successful lawyers work from lists rather than from files. A good system of to-do lists can mean that more files are in the filing cabinet instead of being stacked on your desk.

If you can stand some improvement in this area, here’s an experiment to try over the next few days. Take 20 minutes to write down all of your current to-do’s on a list in no particular order. Then get back to work. As you come up with new tasks that you left off of the list add them. When you complete a task, draw a single line through it on the list. Do not obliterate it. Make sure the list reflects everything you do, even if that means writing down an item and drawing a line through it immediately.

At the end of the day, take a blank sheet of paper and transfer over all of the undone tasks to a list for the next day. This time try to place the most urgent and important tasks at the top of the list. Save the old lists.

It is a common misconception that planning the day is best done at the very beginning of the day. While we each may have different rhythms and different work patterns, for most of us the best time to update our to-do list is at the end of the day. Then we are likely tired and acutely aware of what was not accomplished that day. It is much easier to prioritize the things that need to be done tomorrow and committing all of the undone tasks to paper leaves a sense of closure for the day. You can leave the office knowing that you are prepared to “hit the ground running” in the morning.

After three or four days, take a few minutes to review all of your old task lists to see if there are time-wasters or things that should have been delegated to a staff person in the office. For those of you who fell out of the to-do list habit, you’ve re-established the good habit now, if you can just keep it up.

Remember, it only seems easier to have many files piled on and around your desk. Try working from more lists and less from files. You may actually find it is easier that way.

2. Plan some time this week just to work.

You may have heard this from me before and likely will again. We’ve all noted the fact that we often get more done in a few hours of evening or weekend time at work than in an entire regular workday in the office. The reason is that you have no interruptions or, at least, fewer interruptions. In fact, it is the practice in many law firms that a large amount of the work gets done every day after the staff leaves and the phone lines are no longer answered.

It is very important for you to schedule some time without interruption for you to get your work done. Hopefully you can schedule this every day, but if not, you can at least schedule it several times a week. Be very clear with everyone else in the office that you should not be interrupted except for emergencies. Allow your staff the same luxury of scheduling some time when you and the other lawyers will stay out of their hair.

An article was written about one law firm which scheduled a whole afternoon each week where the phone was not even answered. Clients are told that their calls will not be returned until after 4 p.m. on Wednesdays. That may seem a bit radical for some, and is difficult when so much of the work involves telephone conversations, but the idea of having an entire afternoon each week where you could work with no interruptions is certainly appealing.

3. Practice Prioritization

If you only manage to get one thing done each day, make sure it is the most important thing that you have to do. Of course, hopefully a lawyer will get dozens of things done each day.

It is tempting to try and wrap up a few quick tasks, like returning phone calls or routine correspondence, before turning to the major task. That may be appropriate in some situations, like only having ten minutes before you leave for lunch.

But generally speaking, you should prioritize your most important or pressing projects and start on one of them first.

Here’s an exercise in this area. Every morning write down your three most important tasks. Then score yourself at the end of the day on how well you did getting those tasks completed first. You might even make a note as to when you completed each task. Hopefully, you will find the office stress a bit lessened as the “have to” tasks are finished earlier in the day.

Most law practices are deadline driven. Some lawyers assert that working under a tight deadline focuses them and inspires them to do their best work. They even admit to getting a certain thrill from filing a case after 4 p.m. on the date the statute of limitations runs. Well, for most of us life and the law practice brings sufficient anxiety and stress to our door without having to artificially generate more. Your quality of professional life should increase and stress level should decrease if you are not spending every afternoon proofing the documents that have to be filed that day.

4. Take a brief meeting

Meetings can be huge time wasters in law firms with everyone expending billable time. But you can also gain productivity and avoid errors by such coordination.

If you’ve given up on firm meetings, only having them a few rare times per year, maybe you could consider a mini-meeting. The key to these meetings is to start precisely on time, have a limited agenda and finish on time. You may be surprised what you can accomplish in 20 or 30 focused minutes where everyone knows that is all the time there is. To emphasize the point, a kitchen timer can be used to enforce discipline. The small firm lawyer can bring everyone together, shifting the phone off to the answering service for the few minutes. In larger firms, the groupmeeting will be of a practice or department.

The agenda might be as brief as asking everyone what they are working on the next couple of days, whether they have any problems, and whether they might have extra time available to work on other projects. Make sure everyone gets to speak, even if they do not get to cover every point that they wish to discuss.

Scheduling a couple of these 20 minute mini-meetings each week may reduce interruptions because everyone knows when they will have a chance to bring up issues that develop about their assignments and work flow.

5. Do some long term planning

How’s life going? How’s your practice going? Are you where you hoped to be at this stage in your career?

Most lawyers see themselves as immersed in the day-to-day practice of law, with little time for long range planning. Long range planning for a medium size to large law firm can be very time consuming. There is the coordination of schedules, review of a significant amount of data, discussions toward arriving at a consensus, drafting and many other tasks. Realistically, the best way for a good-sized firm to accomplish this is to schedule a law firm retreat.

But for the individual lawyer, whether operating within a firm or as a solo practitioner, long range personal planning can be a much more simple process. Simply schedule a day out of the office in a pleasant setting and notify everyone that you will be out of contact for that day. You can use your laptop computer or a couple of legal pads, according to your personal preference. Spend the first hour or so writing out your goals for the next year and the next five years.

Next review all of your goals and make a determination whether they are realistic or achievable. It never hurts to dream big, but it is also counterproductive to delude yourself with a series of unachievable goals. Some of your goals may be inconsistent. It may be nearly impossible to both increase your income by 50 percent over the next two years and spend more time with your family and coach both children’s basketball teams. If you haven’t run for years, it’s probably best to set a goal of running once or twice a week over the next year instead of running 25 miles a week.

Once you have synthesized a reasonable set of one-year and five-year goals, outline all of the steps that it takes to accomplish these goals. This may take a bit of time, but it’s a five-year plan after all. You can invest a few hours. Then set out the time frame for accomplishing the initial steps during the next six months. Hopefully at the end of this process, you will have a reasonable number of long term goals, combined with a list of the steps you need to take during the next six months to head toward those goals. Then put everything away except for your six-month task list. Docket a date to review your progress in six months. Docket other items as you need to and make a note (or calendar entry) to refer to your six months list every week or so.

More than likely you will not be able to give yourself an A+ when your six month review comes up. But it is also likely that you will have made much more progress toward your long term goals than you have done in any prior six month period. Revise your time lines (and perhaps some of your goals) and give yourself another six months to complete those one-year goals. Long term planning is tough for many of us because it involves so much delayed gratification. But, in the words of the immortal Yogi Berra,”you’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”

6. End something old and begin something new

This is only related to planning on a tangent, but it still fits within our overall subject.

If you are just too busy and too strapped for time, then it is time to cut something from your schedule. This may be easy or painful. It may be that you need to take a six month’s break from that civic club you’ve faithfully attended and worked for all these years. If you are an active, busy volunteer, it may mean learning to say “no”when asked to take on that next project.

From a business standpoint, it may mean pruning your practice of an area that you have done for a long time that is only marginally profitable. It may mean not doing as much of something you enjoy or finally giving yourself permission to stop doing something you have grown to detest. But the point is that each of us, if pressed to examine our professional lives, can probably find something that we truly do not have to be doing any longer.

One of the most precious commodities of 21st Century life is time. While we all have the same amount of it, for most of us it often seems like we have too little. Just like the tree will grow stronger if it is regularly pruned, we can benefit by strategically pruning our activities.

On the other hand, sometimes adding a new activity or practice area can be invigorating or exciting. Most of us enjoy challenges, and doing the same old thing all the time can be very dull. While it may seem contradictory, it may be a great plan to both cut something old and add something new. You certainly should not be bored.

Maybe it’s finally time to take those piano lessons or expand your litigation practice to the federal courts.

Conclusion

Planning, whether long range, short term or daily tasks, is not the most stimulating subject. This is particularly true for busy professionals who spend their time planning many other matters for clients. This article is intended to provide some “bite size” ideas that can be used to perfect your practice without a huge commitment of resources. Sample one of these ideas from our planning smorgasbord. Hopefully you will find something that fits your taste.

If any of you are willing to share your experiences with law firm planning or an idea in this vein that worked or failed, please feel free to e-mail me at jimc@okbar.org. I’d truly love to publish a follow up to this article with many new ideas from Oklahoma lawyers.

Originally published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal September 4 , 2004 - Vol. 75; No.24