Keep Everything Organized So You Can Get the Work Done

As I promised you last week, this week we are going to start talking about the next area in the five things that it takes to make up every business in the world. You will remember that the first thing was “clients or customers,” the second thing is “administration” and the third area is “getting the work done.”

No business in the world can survive without “clients or customers.” No business in the world can exist very long without “administration,” and it is certainly true that no business in the world can exist without “getting the job done.” No one in the world has ever set up any business, unless it was a fraud, that had clients and customers, administration, sent out bills, and collected those bills for doing nothing. “Getting the job done” is an integral part of every business and is at the core of how businesses make money.

Certainly the legal business is no different from any other business. We have to have our “clients or customers,” we have to have “administration,” but most assuredly we have to “get the job done.” Clients do not like to pay bills for lawyers doing nothing.

I have a couple of dozen “tips” to give you with regard to helping you get the work done. Some of these “tips” are in some ways similar to some of the areas I use in the “administration” in my firm, but I think you will see some of the differences that I will set out for you in the explanation regarding these tips.

I previously talked about the concept of a “triage” system as well as sets of files that I use to have my staff both organize my desk when I am not available as well as files to be used to get items off my desk when my staff is helping me go through the paper flow that comes across my desk on a day-to-day basis.

I have another system that I try to use on a day-to-day basis to simply keep track of what is the next thing I should start working on once I have finished with a particular task. For the purpose of this article, I have named this concept “priority stacking of projects and files.” Yes, I even have a name for what I do on a day-to-day basis to stay organized.

Many of you have probably read books about staying organized, attended seminars on staying organized, and tried all kinds of hand written lists, day timers, palm pilots, and computer programs. It never seemed to make any sense to me to make a big long list of what needed to be done when the tasks at hand were literally sitting right in front of you and could be quickly organized as to what was the most important item to be dealt with first. These items on your desk can be organized into various categories and then be sorted so that the most important thing that needs to be done next is on top.

It seems that I have a lot of paper that comes across my desk on a day-to-day basis because I have been blessed by having an abundance of legal business that needs to be handled. I also find that if I don’t pay attention to trying to get the paper off my desk, that it doesn’t take very long for multiple stacks to become almost a foot high. Accordingly, what I try to do is to get the paper off my desk as soon as I possibly can, and to keep on my desk only those things that I have not addressed that need to be addressed relatively immediately. Let me give you a list of the things that I handle daily, not by subject matter, but rather by “priority stacking of projects and files.” My stacks are as follows:
1. Phone Messages;
2. Administrative tasks;
3. Prospective New Matters;
4. Miscellaneous/Personal; and
5. Client matters.

It is important to remember that all of these stacks on my desk are in addition to the information that is contained in my computerized calendar.

Let’s deal with each one of these stacks one at a time. I have previously discussed phone messages, so I will not go into that again other than to tell you that I keep them in reverse chronological order, and I keep them in a separate folder so I can take them with me when I leave the office in case I have an opportunity to return any of the messages while I am out of the office.

The next stack is administrative matters. I must admit that this category is somewhat of an all inclusive category because I throw into that stack items that I have to do with regard to my own firm as well as matters I am involved in as far as professional activities or concerns. These items might have to do with matters that I am involved in at the law school or the bar association or other such organizations. I try to review this stack on a weekly basis and to put the items in the stack in some order of priority in terms of what needs to be done next.

I also have a stack of PNM’s. You will remember that I talked about these extensively in the area of “administration,” and these are forms that are filled out when people contact my office inquiring about whether or not we are available to perform legal services for them. I keep the most current of these PNM forms on my desk until such time as the matter is either opened in my office or I determine that I need to send a non-engagement letter to each of these individuals. Again, I try to sort these on a weekly basis to be sure that the cases that I believe are the best cases to try to bring into the office are at the top of the stack and that I can constantly work this stack to see if there is a way that I can get these cases to actually come in my office. If they are on my desk for more than a week or ten days, I usually immediately send a non-engagement letter and allow the matter to then sit at my secretary’s desk for probably the next month, at which time that matter is then permanently filed with the closed PNM’s.

The next stack I have on my desk is the miscellaneous/personal stack. This is probably the smallest stack of things on my desk because I have a tendency to not want to let this grow to where it can get grossly out of hand. What I try to do is to keep track of things I need to get done relatively quickly by putting them on yellow sticky notes and putting them right by my telephone. These constantly remind me of what I am supposed to get accomplished and my goal is try to end up with no such notes in front of my telephone by the end of each day. I often accomplish the same thing by writing these things in my calendar so that I do not have a proliferation of sticky notes all over my desk. I usually try to limit these sticky notes to items that involve me personally or my family.

I have experimented with various forms in order to make this more efficient, but quite frankly, again, I have found that just utilizing sticky notes seems to work quite well. As I am dictating this article, I only have two sticky notes left at the end of the day. I can either leave them there so I have to deal with them the next day, or I can put them with my phone messages in order to be sure that I get them resolved in short order.

The most important stack of things to do that I have on my desk are client matters. I am constantly working on this pile to see if I can get it down to a bare desk. In thirty-four years I have never succeeded. It is actually somewhat of a game to see how I can get items off my desk and get them delegated to other people to help me get the job done in dealing with my client’s legal business. At the end of each day I sort the pile with regard to what I need to accomplish the next day and to what is the most important thing that I need to address.

Unfortunately, people have a tendency to put things on my desk and therefore those items end up being on top of the items I needed to get to when the day gets started. I often find that it is not until sometime in the mid-afternoon or early evening that I actually get down to where I left off the day before. This is not a great feeling. In fact, I have a saying that I say to my staff that goes as follows, “well, I have now gotten down to where I was yesterday, at least I know how far behind I am!I try to limit the things that are on my desk to these five categories and absolutely no more. Every once in a while, another stack will appear, and I work very hard to be sure to get it off my desk. Sometimes I will put a couple of articles or magazines on my desk that I want to try to get to at the next break. Next break? Good luck! About the only thing these articles can be good for is bathroom reading material!

Well there you have it, your first “tip” in the area of “getting the work done.” The truth is you probably have somewhat of an identical system in your office already. You will do a better job of maintaining that system if you educate your staff about it and if you try to maintain it on a day-to-day basis. If your desk is just one big clutter, good luck! Do something, do anything to get organized and you will be amazed how much better the day goes with regard to telling you instantaneously what the next thing is that you need to get accomplished in order to make your law practice operate in the most effective, efficient and economical manner possible. Like all the rest of the “tips” that I have given you, the most important thing to do is to get started!

Next week we are going to talk about work assignment forms. There are lots of different forms that you can use to accomplish giving work assignments to other people in your office. We are going to talk about both formal and informal ways of doing that. We talked about some of these in the area of “administration,” but I believe it will become even more clear when we talk about the more formal ways of assigning work to others and compare that to some of the faster, easier ways of doing that that I talked about in the area of “administration.”

Talk to you next week!

Jim Wirken is a civil trial attorney and the Chairman of the Board of The Wirken Law Group in Kansas City.