bar of lawyers

>> hi, my name is neil pedersen. i'm a 25plus year attorney and i'm an adjunct professor at a local law school that teaches law practicemanagement and technology. and here i'm going to spend the next ten minutes talking to youabout time management for the busy attorney. benjamin franklin coined the phrase that timelost is never found again, and that is no more important to any profession than a lawyerbecause we as lawyers essentially sell only our time. clients come to us for our experienceand our knowledge and a certain skills set, but the only way we sell those things is bygiving of our time. and there's only so much time in a day that we can give. and so i planto spend the next ten minutes giving you some tips about how you might be able to capturesome of that time and use your time more productively

so that you can either become more profitableas a lawyer or spend more time with your family or friends or doing other things you liketo do with your life. so the first thing we have to do is essentially change our mindset.you have to realize that time is your most valuable asset. things can be lost or stolen.money can be spent and re-earned, but time is lost as soon as you spend it. in fact,it is a finite commodity that vanishes the moment it passes. and so unless you createa mindset that allows you to understand that as you are wasting time, you are wasting avaluable asset you will never get back again, you won't be adjusting your practice. andso what i'd like to do is help give you some suggestions through this, the next nine minutesor so about how you can capture more time

and prevent the waste of your time. now, oneof the things you need to consider is the actual value of your time. as a professional,if you're making something like $300 an hour, a simple one half hour of lost time in a daycan cost you $39,000 in a year. one hour wasted in a day will cost you almost $80,000 worthof your valuable time, and so it's important that you create a mindset that time is valuable.it is your most valuable asset. now, the thing is is that while we can do a lot of thingsto try to manage our day and make our day more efficient, the one thing that reallytakes away time from our day is interruptions. and in fact, a recent study of office workershas indicated that the average office worker gets one interruption every eight minutesor roughly seven per hour. that means that

almost half of the day is taken up in dealingwith interruptions. now, it becomes more important when you realize that those same office workerssaid that only 20% of those interruptions they would have characterized as criticalor important to the things they were doing that particular day, which means 80% of theday or almost three hours of each day are eaten up in dealing with interruptions thatare not critical or important to the things that you wanted to achieve that day. it becomeseven more important when you realize that the nielsen people that do the televisionsurveys, they came up with a statistic that says that an information worker normally hasa ten to 15 interruption to their day for every interruption they receive during theirwork day. and that makes sense because as

we as lawyers, we have what i call a bathtubmentality. we fill our head with a lot of things and we work on a particular thing,but as soon as we are distracted, we have to drain all that out of the bathtub and bringother information into our mind. and then when it's time to go back to our work, wehave to fill our minds again with all of that were we at that particular point in time.and so what you want to do to make the best of your time is to try to avoid interruptions.and so now let's talk about some specific things we can do to both manage your day andavoid those interruptions. so first, it seems simple, but you need to plan your day by makinga to-do list. i call it a day plan. and, you know, when i need to pay my bills at the endof the month, i look at how money's in the

bank and i decide what bills have to be paidand how much money. but rarely do people actually do that with their most valuable asset, theirtime. but if you look at the day before you start the day -- i usually do it the nightbefore -- and say, "what do i need to get done? what is my day plan for my most valuableasset?" and i write down a to-do list that actually looks like a schedule of events.only then are you actually capturing your day and allowing you to control your mostvaluable asset as opposed to just allowing the day to capture you. so put everythingon the list. prioritize the items on that list. see if it's even possible to get doneeverything you would like to get done. and if not, then plan how you're going to putother things off into a different day. and

then be sure to allocate time to your predictableinterruptions. and i'll talk about a couple of those as we go on. so let's move onto asecond tip, which is to keep your work area clean and organized. you know, a disorganizedor messy work desk can cause the average worker up to an hour and a half a day looking forthings on their desk or around their desk that they need to do their job. keep onlyessential papers on your desk. arrange them so they can be grabbed without delay. i normallyon my desk leave only the papers i'm going to use for that day and i put great big post-itnotes with the name of the client or the matter on it so that when the phone call comes ora meeting occurs, i can grab that document off my desk immediately without delay. third,learn how to control meetings. now, as an

attorney, meetings are just a part of ournormal practice, but there are ways that you can prevent meetings from draining away yourmost valuable asset. number one, only go to good meetings. not all meetings that peoplesuggest are necessarily meetings that are, will advance up your particular matter orhelp your client. in fact, there are many times when a telephone conference or evena video conference these days will be equally effective for you and you can save the timeof driving to and from locations, waiting for other people to arrive, and the like.one great way to prevent meetings from draining away too much of your valuable asset is toactually define an end time for the meeting. if you're running the meeting, you start themeeting by saying, "okay, we're going to be

here and my plan is to end this meeting atthree o'clock." and then you manage the meeting to that end time. but even if you're not runningthe meeting, you can show up to the meeting and announce to the group, "i'm only availableuntil three o'clock." and then you can manage the meeting even though you're not runningfrom the point of view that you say to people, "you know, i really need to leave at three,so if we can get onto the important parts of this meeting," you can still control yourmost valuable asset even though you're not in control of the meeting. don't allow yourphone to be a productivity drain. and here's the problem -- a lot of people pick up theirphone when the phone rings and talk to whoever calls, which immediately seeds the right toyour most valuable asset to whoever has your

phone number and calls you. and it might bethe police benevolent association asking for a donation or a vendor or any or a potentialclient. and all of those different people may be important, but not necessarily forwhat you are doing at the moment. what i say you need to do is to define particular periodsof time during the day to return phone calls. don't take the phone call immediate when it's,immediately when it's received. have it go into voicemail. if you have staff, ask yourstaff to ask the person to leave a detailed message on voicemail, and then return phonecalls at designated periods of time during the day. i have at least two -- one in thelate morning and one in the late afternoon -- so that i, my clients never go more thanperhaps two and a half to three hours without

a return phone call. but that way, you allow,you're controlling your most valuable asset as opposed to allowing other people to controlthat most valuable asset. don't allow email and other electronic communications to controlyou. and here's the problem we all have. you're sitting at your desk and you're working diligentlyon something and there's that tone from your computer that says an email has arrived. andall of us, like pavlov's dog, turn to the computer and look to see what that email'sabout. no matter how important that email is, we've allowed it to become a distraction.so here's a great tip. turn that tone off. assign certain parts of the day just likewith phone calls to review and respond to emails. do it at least twice a day so youcan still be responsive, but don't allow that

noise and don't allow the constant receiptof emails during the day to steal away your most valuable asset. ultimately, it comesdown to creating this mindset -- everything you do in the practice of law needs to bewith the idea that time is money, and if i can put certain practices and procedures inplace that will allow me to prevent wasting some of that time, you're going to find thatyou're going to have a lot more time, valuable time, to either do more work and thereforemake more money, spend more time with your family and friends, which will keep you happyand healthy, or maybe take that needed nap. thank you very much.