How attorneys and law firms can 2x their productivity (with 50% less effort)

Attorneys are burned out.

It’s a case of diminishing returns – attorneys are working harder each year while achieving less. If you’re part of BigLaw, you’ll work a minimum of 80 hours per week. If you’re a solo attorney who’s looking to grow, you’ll experience a similar workload but may only average 1,200 billable hours annually.

Is burnout inevitable?

The legal profession is characterized by intense, high-stress work

Even worse, there’s an inherent amount of conflict in the profession.

It’s everywhere.

Conflict inside the firm due to competition and infighting
Conflict with clients who disagree with you on key points
Conflict with third parties to defend your client’s interests

It’s no wonder then that the World Health Organization classifies burnout as a disease. Attorneys are working harder but losing the majority of that time to nonbillable work. They’re hammered by falling realization rates, discouraged by insufficient origination credit and struggling with compassion fatigue.

Many are struggling to cope.

They’re fighting valiantly against the problems they experience on a day to day basis, but they’re finding it harder and harder to perform at work. They ask themselves the question…

Why am I working so hard?

They judge themselves unfairly as being lazy, not having what it takes. As if they’re failures who haven’t been able to produce results. Their days are dominated by busywork.

No wonder so many attorneys hate their jobs.

Increasing productivity requires preparation

It’s completely doable.

If you’d like to achieve a 2x increase in productivity, you’ll need to do some upfront preparation first. This is a massive post, one you’ll want to refer to often. Take notes, test things out for yourself.

First things first.

You’ll need to record your day. Here’s an example shared on Q&A site Quora, by an unhappy and anonymous attorney.

Scan through it.

You’ll need a broad understanding of all of this when it’s time to create your own productivity framework.

********

I’m a mid-level or perhaps senior associate at a large law firm. Let me describe the two types of days that I routinely experience and then mention why I actually think I’m unhappy – as opposed to what you might think if you simply read TNR or ATL.

Busy Day:

7:00 am: Wake up, check Blackberry. See that 30 emails directed to me / my team on projects have come in since I put it down at 2:00 am. Response to 10 of the 30, get four junior associates in motion on tasks for the day. Try to go to gym, but realize I can’t make it because, while I was writing those 10 emails, I’ve had clients send me meeting planners for 8:30 am and 10:00 am calls. (For the initiated, clients rarely ask if I can make a call; sometimes I’m told to get on the line in five or ten minutes, sometimes I get random meeting planners. If matters conflict, somebody screams uncle, but it usually isn’t me.)

7:30 am: Hop on the train (subway). Read more emails while on the train and respond to another 4 or 5 so that responses will launch as soon as I come up from underground.

8:15 am: Arrive at the office. Start printing documents for 8:30 am call b/c secretaries won’t arrive for another hour.

8:30 am: Call gets moved to 9:00. Thank god I don’t expect it to last more than an hour, or I’d already have a conflict. Use extra time to look over documents I expect I’ll be discussing on 9:00 call. (But still no clue of its content because I tried emailing the client, but the client did not respond.)

9:00 am: Jump on call. Fortunately, it’s on what I expected. Client wants to do another call with the other side at 10:00 am because he is heading to the beach with his kids at noon. I inform client I have another call at 10:00 and client asks me to push that call for him. I try to dodge by proposing 10:30 and promising to keep the other call to 30 minutes. All the while, 40 new emails come in while I am on the call. I get two more junior associates moving on projects, IM with another three and request additional experienced staffing for one project.

10:00 am: Get on second call. Again have no idea what it will be about, but assume I can handle it because it is with an unsophisticated corporate client that we love because it lets us ring the meter. Junior comes to my office to listen to call. In-house lawyer bloviates about irrelevant points for 30 minutes and I field another 20 emails while on call and mark a document at my desk, occasionally paying attention to the call. The junior is in my office, but I never look at her because I’m just trying to get done what I need to get done to not fall further behind.

10:30 am: I recap call with junior associate (largely because I missed key points while marking the document that is at my desk, and need her to tell me what happened). I then get on the 10:30 am call with the 9:00 am client and try to pay attention because the client is a business-side managing director. I check the news, anyway, however, in part because I know that nothing I do on the call will in any way impact my pay or my chance of promotion, so I don’t really pay much attention.

11:00 am: Call ends. I follow-up with benefits and IP on some points raised on the 10:30 am call. They’re not expecting my queries, but they can’t do anything. I CC the client and the relevant partners so that the client knows I’m following up on his points and so that the benefits and IP associates have to meet my stated timeline or look bad. (Chances are, they won’t respond anyway. We won’t fire them for it, and we won’t pay them any more if they do.)

11:30 am: Take a few minutes to skim the news; get coffee. Return to desk and begin marking documents drafted by juniors for one of my deals. Attempt to mark them without interruption, but answer the phone every 10 or 15 minutes and lose train of thought.

1:15 pm: One of my callers asked me if I’ve seen emails that just came in, and if I’ve reviewed the documents attached — 250 pages, came in five minutes ago. I tell the client that, no, I have not yet reviewed the documents, but I will as soon as I can and generally try to determine whether the matter is urgent. When I realize that his deadline for this afternoon is false (like most deadlines), I find a way to push the work back. (I have more work on my plate than I could complete if I stayed in the office 24×7 for two or three weeks, so it’s always a matter of fighting whatever fire is burning strongest; never a matter of real project management.)

2:00 pm: Begin catching up on emails; see that I missed two calls while reviewing documents and hope clients/partners are not mad at me for missing them. Call juniors to determine what I missed.

2:30 pm: Urgent email from client. Don’t believe that matter is urgent b/c every matter from this client is said to be urgent, but call client to check.

2:45 pm: Matter not urgent, so grab lunch in the cafe. Eat lunch at desk while responding to emails.

3:00 pm: Things are quiet, so catch up on document that has sat on my desk for more than a week. The official deadline was last Friday, but we all know that deadline was false and I probably blow through 50+% of my deadlines.

3:30 pm: The fire drills begin. Client says it wants to sign a set of documents today, none of which we’ve seen. I call two juniors to get them to review parts and to get tax review. I skim as fast as I can, isolating key points.

4:00 pm: Three clients have already sent me voicemails on other projects, and I have two more meeting planners, both for calls at 4:30 pm. I ignore all to close out document I’m reading for the 3:30 pm client.

4:30 pm: I jump on one of the calls and find out this client also wants documents signed tonight. I IM some juniors and wonder how I can possibly get this done.

5:00 pm: Partner drives by and drops a 200-page markup on my desk. He spends 30 minutes in my office trying to discuss it despite my telling him that other matters are in process and need to be closed out.

5:30 pm: I’ve been hit with two more clients who want to sign documents today. I now have five projects that are trying to get done by today. I push things forward to the extent I can, do the least possible amount of work I am OK with on each project and push things out. I am on and off calls with each client for next three hours while turning the documents.

8:30 pm: I’m now waiting for comments on three of the five matters. The other two have died: false alarms. I catch up on emails.

9:00 pm: Things get hot again and it’s just like at 5:30 pm, except that now it’s harder to reach the clients but the deals still need to get done. This continues until 10:30 pm.

10:30 pm: Order dinner on seamless, catch up on emails not related to hot projects.

11:00 pm: Documents begin to come back and junior associate dumps work on me from outside of my practice group. I try to tell him to shove it, but I can’t because he has CC’d a powerful partner. I ignore the deals that I’m trying to close and deal with the junior associate’s query.

11:15 pm: Return to hot deals. Continue going back and forth (I’m still receiving 50-100 emails an hour on these projects) for next 2 hours.

1:15 am: One deal done, the others can’t be finished because one side’s clients went home and all outstanding points are “business points” (i.e., they matter, so we can’t touch them because we are just lawyers). Turn back to other work that builds during the day. Because most of my juniors are gone, do whatever needs to be done that hasn’t yet been done.

2:00 am: Get markups from Asian office. Powerful partner CC’d, so turn documents myself, which include such wonderful 2:00 am tasks as adding brackets to the trailers on signature pages. Finish in about 90 minutes, and call a car.

3:45 am: Get in car, knowing that everything that I did not close last night will be open by 9:00 am the next morning, likely with clients hounding me to get in touch with the other side, update all dates and numbers, etc., from approx. 7:00 am onwards.

*********

Not-Busy Day

7:00 am: Wake up, check Blackberry and see 20 emails. None need to be handled by me, so I ignore them.

7:15 am: I go to the gym and aim to get into the office at 9:30 am.

9:30 am: I skim the news and ignore projects that have sat on my desk for weeks. I turn to them at 10:00 am and work on them until 1:00 pm.

1:00 pm: I get lunch and say hi to my secretary. I eat lunch at my desk so that I can continue to plow through the backlog from busier days.

4:00 pm: I get coffee b/c I am bored with the work and want to talk to somebody. I bring coffee back to my desk, anyway, and continue to read and mark more documents.

8:30 pm: I finish reading what I think ought to be read today (It’s really my call; every deadline I have at this point is obviously false and I cannot possibly clear my plate.), and call it a day by having document services scan my markups.

8:45 pm: I take the train home, a little happier because I talked to the folks in document services, at the coffee shop and the cashier in the cafeteria. Otherwise, I just spent the last 11.25 hours alone in my office, proofreading and marking documents without any human interaction.

*********

How many people would like to work through either of these two types of days?

When you add partners who scream at you (and do indeed throw objects when angry), associates who routinely backstab each other, fixed salaries and bonuses so that there is no link between pay and performance, or pay and value add, and partnership odds of roughly 1 in 25 to 1 in 50 – as well as sometimes weeks on end in which you do not leave the office before midnight – there are just a lot of things not to like about the practice of law.

This is horrible.

It’s easy to understand why this attorney is so unhappy. This attorney is in a bizarre form of solitary confinement (11.25 hours alone). Their day is filled with assorted power moves, a consistent deluge of work from above and below as partners and associates drop work her and soul-crushing isolation.

This is unhealthy.

There’s very little human interaction — no hobbies or downtime to speak of. No time for family, relationships or even a full night’s rest.

It’s unsustainable.

Why you should copy this unhappy attorney’s example

No, I’m not recommending that you copy their professional lifestyle.

Just the journaling.

You’ll want to document your day from beginning to end for 30 days. This isn’t about right or wrong. It’s not about whether your current schedule or level of productivity is effective or not. Just get your current performance down.

No judgment.

No beating yourself up over any failures, no blaming others for a lack of progress. Just creating a factual account that outlines your productivity and the way you spend your time each day.

What happens afterward?

You’ll want to take note of the following details in your day.

When you start work
What you work on and when
Who you speak to throughout the day
Which clients reach out to you the most
What these clients want or choose to discuss with you
Which matters, activities or events produce the majority of your billings?
The matters, activities or events take up most of your time
Who adds to your workload?
What is added to your workload?
How you’re tracking or documenting your time (and whether it’s accurate)

Why go to the trouble of documenting and analyzing your day? You can’t fix a problem if you don’t know it exists. You need a clear idea of the details you’re facing.

You need reporting.

If you’re relying on a legal practice management tool, you should already have reporting options in place. You just have to record your time. If you don’t have a practice management solution in place you can use charting tools like amcharts to visuals your time spend.

If you’re like many other attorneys, these charts may confirm what you already know.

You work too hard.

Fear kills attorney productivity, increases busywork

What are attorneys afraid of? Let’s take a look at a few of these fears so I can demonstrate what I mean.

If you work hard, you’ll make partner. This isn’t true in a large number of cases. Some firms create partners-in-name-only (Pinos). Others dangle the carrot in front of associates until they give up, move on or finally succeed.
If you make a mistake, we’ll fire you, or you’ll ruin your career. A single mistake involving the wrong client or partner can be enough to disqualify an attorney from future employment.
If you want to keep your job, you’ll outwork work your peers. This is an implicit expectation that’s typically hinted at with passive-aggressive comments and used to keep associates pushing hard to meet increasingly difficult demands.
If you don’t do a good job, you won’t get more work. The implication here is that you’ll be weeded out if firm decision-makers decide that you’re incapable of producing the quality or quantity of results they’re looking for.
If we overwhelm you with work, it means we like you. It’s an invitation for attorneys to run on the hamster well of partner approval, constantly striving for positive feedback in the hopes of one day making partner.
If you’ve made a mistake, hard work will fix it. Push yourself even harder. Produce more billables to compensate for your mistake. Work hard enough and we’ll let you know when you’re back in our good graces.
Your peers are working harder than you. Code for “if you consistently outpace your peers, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to cultivate enough social capital to keep your job during the next round of layoffs.”
If you want to pay off your student loans, a career in law is the only way you’ll be able to do it. This isn’t the only way for students to pay off their student loans, but it is the most obvious and viable solution. According to Nerd Wallet, the average law school student graduates with $145,550 student loan debt, including undergraduate loans.
Associates are expendable and replaceable. Research shows there’s a surplus of attorneys who are looking for work. That’s good news for firms and bad news for associates.
Partners are expendable and replaceable. The implicit expectation here is rainmaking. Partners are expected to bring in a significant amount of new business to the firm. For many firms, this is the only way to ensure true security.
You can’t attract clients without us. The idea behind this fear is the fact that you’re trading on your firm’s good name to attract and retain new clients. This may or may not be true.
You need us; you can’t make it on your own. This is an irrational fear that’s used to retain associates and partners, especially if the firm in question is prestigious or authoritative.
If you leave the firm, you’ll lose everything. The frightening part about this is the fact that it’s true to a certain extent. There’s a surplus of hungry attorneys who are out of work. That number is always rising. If you leave on less than ideal terms, there’s a chance you may hurt your career prospects, especially if your firm
If you leave your firm, your standard of living will decrease. It’s true only if you’re unable to find another position that enables you to maintain your standard of living. If you’re an average attorney that’s a very real possibility.

Taken to an extreme, these are dangerous.

Is there anything wrong with a firm promising partner or using it as a tool to motivate associates? Not at all. It is a problem if firms are using these items to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt in their team.

Why is this a problem?

Moral and ethical issues aside, what’s the issue here? Many of the above issues have a degree of truth to them. If you’re terrible at your job, yes, it’s a great idea to fix the problem before giving you more client work. Many professionals don’t see the problem.

It’s toil vs. productivity.

Many people believe toil and productivity are the same. In reality, they’re opposites. Let’s break it down a bit.

Toil refers to tedious, exhausting and repetitive busywork that’s relentless or never-ending. It’s fruitless, low-value work that erodes morale in your firm. Repetitious tasks – document reviews, proofreading, copying performed indefinitely – these are the necessary but despair-inducing parts of practicing law. Unhealthy toil produces stress, burnout and fear.
Productivity: Work that moves the needle, takes you closer to your goals, or helps you build a solid reputation in your firm or industry. It’s work (big or small) that produces the kind of results you’re looking for in your career. Its meaningful work you know will showcase your considerable talents. It’s a morale booster for firms.

Give toil a purpose, create a compelling why, and it morphs into productivity. Remove meaning or purpose from a productivity task; take away the why and it becomes toil. It’s all about the why behind your work.

Get the why right and productivity skyrockets. Create meaning and you’ll find you’re able to dramatically increase your salary, create the promotion you want, or become your firm’s next all-star.

With the right why your…

Conventional results create trust. Conventional results = doing your job exceptionally well. Being a great attorney, going above and beyond for clients and your team. Exceptional day-to-day performance increases. If you’re a real estate attorney, your documents and agreements are above reproach; your work is pristine, you’re fast, efficient, helpful, productive, etc.
Transformative results create career opportunities. These are extras, the above and beyond results that make things better for your firm, the industry or clients as a whole. It can be as simple as sharing knowledge via a speech, interview or article or as comprehensive as personally taking on a client. It’s your big break, the chance to handle a major action on behalf of your firm or take the lead on a major client’s matter.

Here’s why these results matter. Conventional results are boring and often insignificant. They’re little things that show partners how you’ll perform with big things. Transformative results are outlandish, terrifying and intense – if they go wrong, they can be career, firm or relationship enders.

Here’s the thing about these.

The partners in your firm? They want both conventional and transformative results. But they’re not interested in transformative change until they trust you to achieve the conventional. Transformative results are often risky; the trust you’ve accumulated acts as a buffer, giving them what they need to take a chance on you.

Think back to the items in our list above.

Can you see the problem with these items? These whys create toil. They don’t create productivity. The people in these firms will only work as hard as they need to, to prevent these disasters from coming true.

They coast after that.

Performance drops once that fear is gone. How can associates and support teams in these firms continue to grow? How can their firms grow? Their why doesn’t motivate them to improve, it restricts movement due to a fear of loss!

How to 2x your productivity in half the time

This sounds pretty unbelievable, doesn’t it? You’re overwhelmed with work as it is. How are you supposed to be able to accomplish more in half the time?

Focus on principles first.

With the right principles, you’ll be able to achieve massive gains in productivity, gain more free time and achieve work/life balance, something others believe to be impossible.

Step #1: Plan for Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson’s law is the adage that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” Why would this be a problem for attorneys?

Your peers are going to sabotage your progress.

As you make significant strides with the productivity framework below, you’ll come across saboteurs. Other associates, partners, support teams – they’ll see that you have more free time. If you don’t have a plan for your free time it will be taken from you.

They’ll fill your time with extra work.

As your productivity increases, you’ll need to have a plan for the additional time you receive. That time needs to be guarded jealously. You can fill that time with more billable work, business development work, free time, anything you choose But it needs to be done on your terms.

Step #2: Develop a F!@k off fund

You need leverage to be able to say No with power.

Paulette Perhach wrote the Story of a F!@k Off Fund. She showed how people accept horrible behavior from their co-workers and bosses, simply because they need their job.

“A few weeks later, your boss calls a one-on-one in his office, walks up behind you, and stands too close. His breath fogs your neck. His hand crawls up your new dress. You squirm away. He says, “Sorry, I thought…”

You know what to do. You’re just shocked to find you’re not doing it. You are not telling him to f!@k off. You are not storming out. All you’re doing is math. You have $159 in the bank and your car payment and your maxed out credit cards and you’ll die before you ask your dad for a loan again and it all equals one thought: I need this job.”

It doesn’t have to be a situation that’s as flagrant as this. It could be as simple as:

Junior associates CC’ing partners when they drop extra work in your lap to corner you
Partners demanding that you fast track a particular matter or project over other priority items
Partners attempting to poach clients from you
Being asked or expected to “ring the meter” or provide clients with subpar work
Resisting attempts to steal your origination credit
Being forced to work with toxic or chronically abusive clients (who make the firm a lot of money)

This doesn’t have to be monetary.

There are hundreds of little headaches like these, many of them occurring daily. The circumstances are different, but the pattern is the same. Something goes wrong. You see it but decide to keep your mouth shut.

You want to keep your job.

The point here is the fact that you’re able to say No to flagrant lapses in judgment. You’ll need leverage to do that. Here are some ways you can create leverage (and the ability to say No).

You don’t need a paycheck due to (savings, investments, trust fund, etc.)
You’re a brilliant attorney with deep expertise in a profitable practice group
You have connections (or the ability to create connections) that are beneficial to your firm
Your breadth of knowledge is massive. You’re the maven everyone goes to for answers
You’re a unicorn (e.g., workhorse rainmaker who happens to be connected to powerful influencers)
You’re an exceptional rainmaker who’s consistently able to generate business on demand
You have a unique ability that enables you to do what other attorneys can’t or won’t do

Your F!@k off Fund boils down to having something your firm wants or needs but can’t get on their own. Don’t have the leverage you need? Take an additional 30 min. to two hrs per week to identify strategies you can use to create leverage.

Step #3: Learn how to say No

Partners don’t want to hear the word No.

But you need to use it often. How do you say no without saying no? Here’s how Adam Grant, Wharton professor and author of Give and Take, does it:

The deferral. I’m completely swamped right now. Would you follow up with me later, say 3 PM?
The delay. The deadline for [client project] is today. If I take on one of these new matters we’ll miss this deadline. Would you check with [partner] to see if he’s okay with me taking this on?
The introduction. I’m completely in the dark about [practice area]. Mitchell is our resident expert, would it be alright for me to follow his lead on this?
The bridge. Catherine and Reginald are actually already working on [client matter]. Would you like me to reach out to them?
The relational account. If I take on [matter], I’ll be letting [partner] down. He was counting on me finish this by 4:30 PM today. I’m happy to help if he’s okay with putting his project on the back burner.

See the difference?

Every demand has a consequence, something that’s easy for management to forget. But that’s exactly how it works in the real world. If you want X done, I won’t be able to finish Y, and so on. Do it this way and you teach co-workers that every decision comes with a cost.

Step #4: Create a list of barriers and disruptors

At this point, you should have a substantial amount of data outlining the various aspects of your productivity. You’ll want to make a list of the problems impacting your productivity and your solution to deal with each of these problems.

Problem	Solution
A partner at your firm adds to your workload daily	Use Adam Grant’s No strategies (see above)
Junior associates CC partners to corner you into more work	Use their CC to re-delegate task back to the junior partner or a more capable associate
Clients haven’t given you the materials or feedback you need to finish your work.	Pivot to another client matter or project
You can’t handle client matters and business development	Outsource, delegate, automate or hire additional help

Do this for each of the barriers you’ve identified in your 30-day assessment.

Create solutions for each one.

Step #5: Choose your time categories

Choose the time categories you’d like to devote your time to. You may not be able to pick and choose the tasks you prefer. I get it. It still important that you choose the tasks you’re going to focus your attention on.

You’ll see why in a moment.

There are several categories attorneys are expected to manage. Here’s a shortlist.

Working on client matters
Business development
Review management
Client intake and follow up
Client service and support
Administrative tasks
Scheduling meetings and appointments
Automating tasks and deadlines
Automated time tracking for billing and invoicing
Bookkeeping
Automated document assembly
Employee management
HR support and career development

There’s a good chance you have more to do, but we’ll begin with this shortlist for now. Which of these is most preferable? That all depends on whether you’re a grinder, minder, binder finder. Attorneys generally fall into one of these four roles.

Finders are rainmakers. They bring new clients, business and revenue to a firm. Good finders are exceptionally rare, which makes them incredibly valuable to a firm. When times are good, finders often make more. When times are bad, finders often make dramatically less money than their peers.
Binders are connectors. These attorneys are sophisticated networkers, able to connect with, build and maintain deep relationships with important and powerful people. They receive and provide others with important introductions.
Minders are managers or bureaucrats. Often times they’re on executive committees or they’re the managing partner responsible for administrative tasks. They manage attorneys, paralegals and support teams. In short, they run law firms. They’re efficient, precise and capable of managing a firm.
Grinders are the workhorses of their firms. The majority of attorneys are hired to do one thing. Work on the matters given to them. These attorneys are expected to (a.) do as much (billable) work as possible (b.) produce high-quality work as quickly as possible. Grinders aren’t hired to be mentors, rainmakers or managers. They’re workhorses, nothing more, nothing less.

You’ll want to sort your roles and responsibilities by category. Start with the role you’re assigned at your firm. Most attorneys are hired to be grinders.

Here’s the problem.

Many attorneys are expected to fill multiple roles. Grinders are expected to become rainmakers and binders are expected to maintain connections while grinding away at the office.

That’s okay.

Choose your primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary roles. Your attention will be focused on your primary roles. If you’re expected to fill multiple roles, you’re going to…

Step #6: Slash and burn all other roles and responsibilities

Am I suggesting that you shirk your responsibilities?

Not at all.

Instead, I’m recommending that you outsource, delegate, automate or hire additional help to handle the other roles on an as-needed basis. If your soul law firm that’s short on funds here are three ways you can attract the help and support you need.

Barter: Trade legal services in exchange for marketing and business development help
Spend: Pay for the help and support you need from capable service providers
Buy: Software tools that will enable you to automate and delegate the important parts of practice management

What does this look like?

If you’re a solo grinder, you can:

Hire the top 3 percent of freelance marketing talent to set up business development funnels. You can also use these freelancers to run low-cost ad campaigns for your firm.
Hire a virtual assistant to manage key components of your personal and professional life.
Purchase practice management and online review software to automate key portions of your business

If you’re a finder and a small firm owner you can:

Hire the top 3 percent of freelance marketing, finance, and project management talent to improve business development and operations efficiency.
Use freelance attorney services like montage legal group, Hire an Esquire or Flex Legal Network to find competent freelance attorneys who are willing to work at a reduced rate.
Focus your attention on rainmaking and growing your firm while relying on third-party help to handle client matters in a specific practice area.

See what I mean?

Get someone else to handle all of the work you can’t (or don’t want to) handle yourself. Here are some ultimate guides you can use to outsource, automate, delegate or hire additional help.

See what I mean?

Focus your attention on your primary role or responsibility. Find ways to outsource, automate, delegate or hire additional help for everything else. It’s an easy way to save a significant amount of time, energy and effort. It’s a way to establish work/life balance, protecting personal, familial and professional relationships.

Sure, this can boost productivity. A 2x increase though?

That sounds impossible.

It certainly sounds impossible but the data shows it’s really quite achievable. Research shows attorneys lose 6 hours per day, every day, to nonbillable work. Attorneys are struggling to produce 2.9 hours of billable work each day.

It’s an uphill battle.

The strategies and tactics I’ve shared means individual attorneys and law firms can generate the revenue they need with 50 percent less effort. This isn’t really about adding anything new; it’s about eliminating the barriers that are already hurting your firm’s ability to perform.

That’s it.

Eliminate these barriers for everyone in your firm and productivity skyrockets.

A 2x productivity boost is possible with the right framework

Attorneys are burned out.

They’re struggling with a case of diminishing returns. Attorneys are working harder each year while receiving less. The legal profession is characterized by incredibly demanding, high-stress work. No wonder they’re finding it harder and harder to perform at work.

Why are they working so hard?

As we’ve seen, you can boost your productivity to unprecedented levels with the right framework and a bit of strategy. A 2x boost in productivity requires some upfront preparation but it’s all fairly simple.

You can do this.

With the right approach and clear boundaries, you’ll find there’s no limit to your productivity gains.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply