What To Do About Tasks?
As a lawyer, you juggle multiple cases, clients, deadlines, and tasks on a daily basis. Keeping track of everything through an ad hoc, disorganized approach leads to mistakes, missed deadlines, frustrated clients, and stress. Systematizing your task management through dedicated tools and processes is essential for running an efficient, transparent, and successful law practice.
Why Systematized Task Management Matters
Task management is often treated as an afterthought in legal practices. Lawyers rely on memory, notes, verbal discussions and a barrage of emails to assign and keep track of tasks. This approach is problematic for several reasons:
Lack of transparency – Without a centralized system, it’s difficult to get a clear picture of outstanding tasks and who is responsible for what. Things slip through the cracks.
Missed deadlines – Deadlines get missed when tasks aren’t recorded and tracked in an organized manner. This reflects poorly on you and the firm.
Lack of priorities – Everything seems urgent when there’s no way to prioritize tasks. This makes it hard to focus your time efficiently.
No documentation – Verbal requests and email exchanges don’t provide proper documentation and context for tasks. Details get miscommunicated or lost.
Reporting issues – It’s hard to pull reports on the status of projects and tasks without a good system. This makes it difficult to assess productivity and capacity.
Client frustrations – When tasks fall through the cracks, clients get frustrated by lack of communication and progress. This damages your credibility and relationships.
Increased stress – Disorganization causes stress as things are forgotten, deadlines loom, and work piles up without structure. This decreases job satisfaction and well-being.
Implementing systemized task management mitigates these problems. It leads to greater transparency, efficiency, client satisfaction and less stress for everyone involved.
Best Practices for Systematizing Task Management
The key to systemizing task management is to make it consistent and centralized. This allows everyone involved to be on the same page with tasks, priorities and deadlines. Here are some best practices:
Document all tasks in one place – Maintain one centralized system, accessible to everyone involved, to record all tasks, assignees, due dates, status and priorities. Popular tools include project management systems, shared task lists, CRMs and legal practice management software.
Establish policies – Institute organization-wide policies on how tasks should be assigned and documented for consistency. For example, require tasks to be submitted through the centralized system vs. email requests.
Define priorities – Categorize tasks by priority levels (high, medium, low) so people know where to focus their time and attention. Tasks can also be tagged by categories like client, matter, case, project, etc.
Assign ownership – Make sure every task has a single, clearly defined owner responsible for completion. Don’t allow tasks to be orphaned.
Set due dates – No task should be without a due date to create accountability and prevent items from slipping. Due dates help schedule priorities.
Track status – Require assignees to update status (in progress, completed, etc.) so managers can monitor progress.
Automate notifications – Set up automated reminders when tasks are coming due or overdue. Many tools have this functionality. This helps prevent missed deadlines.
Review periodically – Have regularly scheduled reviews of the task system to ensure items are moving forward and being completed on time. Identify any bottlenecks or process issues.
Report on metrics – Use the data in your system to pull reports on task completion rates, cycle times, productivity and capacity. Identify improvements that need to be made.
Choosing the Right Tools
To be effective, systemized task management requires using the right enabling technology. Here are key features to look for in task management tools and software:
Central repository – A shared database to store all tasks, assignees, due dates, priority levels, status, notes, and attachments in one place.
Permissions – Ability to assign permissions for who can view, create, edit, delete tasks within the system.
Customization – Ability to create different task types, statuses, fields, views, and automation rules.
Assign/route tasks – Tools to assign tasks to specific individuals and route them through pre-defined workflows if needed.
Priorities – Ability to define priority levels (high, medium, low) and sort / filter tasks accordingly. Due dates also help prioritization.
Notifications – Email or in-app notifications when tasks are due soon, overdue, or marked as completed. Keeps everyone accountable.
Attachments – Ability to attach files and notes to tasks for additional context.
Audit trail – Logs to track all activity and changes to tasks for transparency and auditability.
Reporting – Dashboards, views, and reports to analyze tasks, productivity, capacity, cycle times, and bottlenecks.
Mobility – Mobile apps and offline access to enable managing tasks on the go without connectivity.
Integration – Ability to integrate and sync tasks with email, calendars, workflows, and other systems used by the firm.
Some examples of tools with these features include legal practice management software, CRMs, Microsoft Planner, Asana, Monday.com, Todoist, Trello, and Basecamp. The right choice depends on your firm’s specific needs and budget.
Implementing a Legal Task Management System
Once you’ve chosen a platform, here are some best practices for rolling out systemized task management:
Start with leadership buy-in – Educate partners and executives on the benefits. Have them provide visible endorsement and support.
Define processes – Document detailed protocols for requests, assignments, workflows, statuses and use of the system.
Train staff – Develop training resources and hold sessions to teach people how and when to use the new system.
Transfer existing tasks – Migrate any current tasks into the new system for a centralized record.
Standardize naming conventions – Create consistent formats for task names, descriptions, labels, and categories.
Encourage adoption – Promote use of the system through training, incentives, and leading by example. Highlight benefits.
Refine over time – Solicit user feedback to improve processes. Refine permissions, rules, and configuration.
Review usage data – Look at usage metrics. Address needs for re-training and process changes.
Integrate with other systems – Connect your task management platform with other key firm systems for smoother data flows.
Automate where possible – Take advantage of automation rules and options in the platform like reminders, escalations, and routing.
With consistent use of a centralized task management system following best practices, your firm can gain critical visibility into workloads, ensure accountability, meet deadlines, and deliver an organized and professional service experience for clients. This leads to higher efficiency, productivity and profitability for your firm as well as better work-life balance for staff. Investing time in properly systemizing task management is well worth the effort for the long-term benefits.
Catherine Sanders Reach serves as director of the NCBA Center for Practice Management.