There’s a lot that goes into running a law firm, and often, personal injury lawyers find themselves overwhelmed with tasks. You may feel like there’s never enough time in the day, and growth may feel impossible when you can barely keep up with your current workload. Maximizing productivity is essential if you want to continue to grow and scale your personal injury firm.
Luckily, there are a few steps you can take to make your law firm run more efficiently. Read on to discover our top five productivity tips for personal injury attorneys from top law firms.
Go Digital
If you’re still using pen-and-paper systems to run your personal injury law firm, one of the first steps you need to take is to go digital. Physical files are inefficient, prone to getting lost or damaged, and bad for the environment. Going digital can not only improve communication among your employees but also make your system more efficient.
Once you scan all your documents and store them in a cloud-based system, you can run a search and find what you’re looking for in a matter of seconds rather than minutes or hours. You can also find names that may be connected to client cases, such as doctors, work supervisors, and more.
Make To-Do Lists
It may sound simple, but one of the best ways to improve your productivity is to make to-do lists. You may be able to keep track of everything you have to do, but can everyone at your firm? And working off of a mental list often leads you to work on the next thing you remember rather than the most important thing on your list.
Write down your to-do list and keep it updated. When you finish with one task, check your list and see which task takes priority next. Encourage everyone at your firm to do the same so the top-priority tasks are getting handled in a timely manner.
Automate Workflows
There may be some items that you can take off your to-do list entirely with a little process automation. If there are repetitive tasks that routinely eat up time at your firm, consider outsourcing those to a computer.
If you use a specific document format in a lot of your cases, consider creating a template so you can cut out the time it takes to set up that format every time. If you find yourself sending the same information over and over again, set up a canned email that you can customize quickly instead of writing the same thing multiple times.
Automate your document storage and meeting scheduling so your staff doesn’t have to spend time on tasks that the computer can handle for them.
Delegate Tasks
One of the biggest traps personal injury attorneys fall into is thinking they can handle every aspect of running their firm on their own. While this may be feasible for solo practitioners or small firms, it doesn’t leave you any room to grow. You have a limited number of hours in the day, and as your firm grows, it will take more and more time to manage everything it takes to keep it running.
Instead, practice delegating early. Hire people you can trust, and put responsibility for different pieces of your firm into their hands. It’s a good idea to check in and make sure your systems are working well, but you don’t want to be the one handling the day-to-day work.
Schedule Focus Periods
As you go through your day, you may notice that your workflow gets interrupted a lot. Emails roll in, you have phone calls, or your staff comes to you with questions or updates. This makes it hard to get into a good rhythm.
Create a managing plan, try scheduling periods of time where you can just focus on doing deep work. Turn off your phone ringer, close your email, and ask your staff not to interrupt you unless it’s a dire emergency. These periods can be as short as just twenty to thirty minutes or as long as a few hours, depending on your needs and setup. You’ll be amazed at how much you can get done without all the constant interruptions.
Work Smarter
Running a law firm is a lot of work, and improving your productivity can help you grow and scale more effectively. If you haven’t already, convert your system to digital and learn to automate workflows. To-do lists, delegation, and scheduled focus periods can also help you get more done in less time.