Trial Magazine

No matter how long you have been practicing law, you have been there: that moment when you know that your list of things to do is impossible to accomplish. Perhaps you are a particularly busy litigator. Maybe a colleague is leaving your firm, and you are inheriting their cases. Maybe cases that started at different times are heating up at the same time.

The only thing you can expect in a law practice is the unexpected. You should expect your workloads will go from manageable to unmanageable overnight. The solution to this anxiety-provoking inevitability requires self-reflection, a dedicated effort to explore and identify the right solution, and commitment to making that solution work for you.

Admit You Have a Problem

Many attorneys brag about having too much work. They view it as a lifestyle, not a problem. However, success is not reflected in the number of cases you have. It is reflected in the number of cases that result in settlements or verdicts for your injured clients, which requires both hard work and good work. You will not achieve real success with a caseload you cannot manage. So, fess up. Admit you cannot do it all and that you need a solution.

Identify the Problem

As attorneys, we may not be good at admitting the problem of having too many cases, but we are experts at investigating and determining the cause of problems. It just so happens that the key to solving an overwhelming workload is finding and addressing its cause—something we are all adept at doing. As with litigation, the cause is most often not an easy, clean answer but rather multifaceted.

Are there just too many cases for you to feasibly handle? That can be a mixed blessing because it means that your law firm is thriving. But that abundance of work is not tenable. It is not just the number of cases that spell your success, it is the number of cases that you bring to a successful conclusion. To obtain successful results in your clients’ cases, you must push each and every one. Too many cases cannot be pushed at once without help.

Pushing cases requires diligence and tenacity. From intake to conclusion, you must get what you need from your client to negotiate a settlement and, if that fails, file a complaint. Once the complaint is filed, you must follow up, follow up, and follow up some more to get the case to trial. If the defense does not fully and completely answer written discovery, then conferral, depositions to elucidate missing information, and an eventual motion to compel may be necessary to keep the case moving.

If you do not have the help to push many cases, slowing the flow of incoming cases so that you can catch up is another option. Of course, that requires that you do the one thing successful lawyers hate to do with regard to incoming potential cases: Say no.

Your “no” does not have to be permanent. You can press “pause” by telling potential new clients that you are not currently accepting new cases and refer them to a few trusted lawyers at other firms. If you have a staff member who handles intake, they can deliver this message. Once you catch up, you can go back to vetting and accepting cases.

Divide and Conquer, Together

If you decide that you do not want to turn away potential clients, the solutions must be different and something else must change. Are you overloaded because you need help? At first, that seems like an easy fix. If you do it right, though, it is not.

The nonlawyer solution. You must take a hard look at the type of help you need. This can come in many packages, especially if you are a type-A lawyer, as many of us are. If you are not willing to let go of the reins, your answer will be different than if you are more willing to surrender control.

If you want to stay in the driver’s seat no matter what, consider hiring support staff rather than an attorney. Before you hire new staff, though, consider what they can do to help relieve the pressure, and hire the person that will best suit that role.

For instance, if you just need someone to manage your calendar, return calls, and draft letters, a legal assistant may be the right fit. If you need someone to answer discovery, a paralegal may be your best option. If you need help with social media and tasks that are not law-specific, look outside the legal field for candidates with experience in communications and marketing or as social media managers.

The lawyer solution. If you delegate case management with ease, another lawyer may be the right fit. Once you bring other lawyers into the mix of your firm and cases, you gain the added benefit of having access to other opinions and approaches. More legal brains can breed more creativity, which can spawn success in a plaintiff practice.

If you vet a lateral hire lawyer sufficiently and they have handled cases, negotiated settlements, and taken the lead at trial, trust them to hit the ground running and take work off your plate. The right lateral hire can come in and immediately relieve your problem.

If you want to stay in control but still need help, consider hiring a new lawyer and training the new lawyer to practice law the way you practice law. This is a good option if you need help with coverage for depositions and hearings but want to remain in charge of your cases.

The downside to this option is that, unless you hire an overachiever who thinks the way you do and is a quick study, onboarding this person and getting them to a point where they can be helpful to you will take time and effort. That will not ease the overwhelming nature of your schedule in the short term.

When it comes time to interview potential new hires, let the candidates interview you. Be candid about the role. If you are hiring support staff, tell them how you work and what they will be doing—the good and the bad. Tell them if you tend to get work done at the last minute and if you like to redline work and send it back for revisions multiple times. Let them know what they are getting into.

With a new lawyer—seasoned or not—be transparent about whether partnership is ever going to be on the table or if it is your way or the highway. Otherwise, the lawyer may harbor false expectations and distrust.

Most importantly, call every reference yourself. Tell them about the role and let them speak to whether the candidate will be a good fit. And, finally, trust your gut. If you have reservations, you are most likely right. Hiring fast will not solve your problem. Hiring right will.

The ‘efficiency by process’ solution. Alternatively, maybe the problem is that you have the people to do the work, but they are not working efficiently. If so, you may need to enact policies and procedures that promote efficiency. This involves looking at what you want to accomplish, asking why it is taking longer than it should, and streamlining to remove the delay.

Sometimes this is as easy as clearly delegating who is in charge of which piece of your team effort or designating one specific person to OK a case before it gets signed up versus waiting for a quorum.

If you find that two people are performing the same role and, at times, assuming the other has done the work, set up a policy to help them know who should take the lead in what situation. For example, maybe one handles pre-litigation cases and the other handles those in litigation or one handles the matters in two of your four practice areas and the other handles the remaining two. The solution can be a simple change once you identify the problem.

Putting these policies and procedures in place will take time, but it will save time in the long run. It can be as easy as having a team meeting to decide who is on first on what piece of your cases or as complex as a flowchart of case progress, depending on the size and efficiency of your team.

Tap Others’ Strengths

Part of your analysis should include asking whether you have the right people in the right roles—or the right people, in general. Sometimes people are not a good fit for their role but may fit well in another role. Other times, an employee may not be a good fit for your firm.

In those situations, avoidance is not a solution. If someone is not the right fit, they likely also do not enjoy the role. Solve this by being honest with them and helping them find a role that is a better fit. Your firm will be most efficient when everyone likes what they are doing and works as a team. The solution does not necessarily have to involve demotions or firings. You can often remedy the situation by helping people reach their full potential, whether that is inside or outside your firm.

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Address your to-do list and the best way to handle it, or it will rule you.

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Outfit Yourself for Success

If you have the right team but still have an impossible to-do list, you may need better tools to organize your practice. Today’s tools are as varied as your imagination. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help you draft just about anything you draft in your practice: email, letters, notes of meetings and arguments. It can also tackle difficult projects like medical chronologies and marketing projects, including social media posts. Some lawyers use it to draft complaints and briefs. If you can dream it, AI can probably do it. But, beware: AI is only as good as its technology and attorneys should never completely rely on it without review and independent thought.

Other products you can purchase can help you stay organized, like MyCase, NetDocuments, and the old standby, Microsoft 365 Suite. In addition to providing a workspace, these products can provide document management, as well as interoffice communication and collaboration tools. They can also assist with sending large volumes of documents to other firms, among numerous other time-saving measures.

Outsourcing can be another option. You can send case medical records to an outside vendor that will return a completed medical chronology to you. You can send your deposition transcripts to an outside vendor that will return summaries to you. The trick is finding a vendor that creates the products that work for you, which is not always an easy task.

The trouble with these products and services is that there are so many, and they all tout that they are the best for your legal practice. So, how do you figure out which one is the best fit? Investigate—another skill we lawyers have in spades.

Talk to other lawyers who manage practices like yours. How do they handle their case flow? Ask defense lawyers how they manage their case flow. Some defense firms miraculously prepare the same top attorney for every single significant mediation and trial. How does that attorney manage those cases and attend each of these events knowing the case so well? What products do those firms use?

Even if you get recommendations from other attorneys, research, research, research. If you choose products as part of your solution, they are only as good as what they do, and they do not do everything. They also come with hidden costs, including fees to transfer your files to their platforms. Some charge for troubleshooting assistance.

When doing your research, at a minimum, find out:

• What tasks and reminder systems does the case-management software offer?
• What is the cost per user? Are there any bundle deals?
• How easy is it to add users to or subtract users from the software?
• Is there a data migration fee?
• Can you send documents and folders of documents by link or email through the system?
• Is there a trial period after which you can get a partial or full refund?
• How can you ask customer service questions about the product over time? Is it a free service?

Besides these questions, the most important one you should ask the software sales representative is, what other law firms or attorneys use the product? Find out their names and ask them what they like and don’t like about the product. It is important to understand a product’s faults when deciding if it’s a good fit for a litigation practice.

Err on the side of asking too many questions. Assign one of your most detail-oriented colleagues who knows every aspect of your firm—or perform the investigation yourself. All of these products come with a significant price tag, and companies make it difficult to obtain a refund, so make sure to choose the one that works best for you.

Remember that not everyone is tech savvy and, even if they are, they might not use all the tools these products provide. If a wall calendar and a reminder app are what works best for a particular lawyer, they should use the tools that suit them. Just because other firms use these products does not mean that they will help you in your practice. They may do the opposite.

You Do You

We are litigators for a reason. We are creative thinkers who took the path less taken, and we excelled. Do not expect that managing your practice will be any different. Just because one solution works for one law firm does not mean it will work for yours. Think back to law school: Did you study with a group or solo? Create the path that works for you.

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A solution that works for one law firm may not work for yours. Think back to law school: Did you study with a group or solo? Create the path that works for you.

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No matter what, don’t wed yourself to a solution, even if it costs you money to find a new one. If you purchased software that is inefficient and creates more problems than it solves, use your lawyer skills to negotiate out of that software agreement and into a solution that works. If you hired someone to solve the problem and they are not working out, help them find a better fit and solve your problem a different way. The problem will not go away by itself. If the solution does not solve it, pivot. It is what we do for a living.

Most of us are perfectionists who settle for nothing less than success. Your to-do list can be checked off if you can manage it correctly. But you need to address the list and the best way to handle it, or it will rule you and perhaps land you in bar or legal trouble. So, acknowledge the problem, find the cause, solve the problem, and—in taking each of these steps—know you are not alone in the struggle.

That said, do not let this problem fester or the success you have achieved will end up being the orchestrator of your eventual failure. You cannot handle it all. None of us can. You cannot take on more than you can handle. Be ethically responsible. Being too busy for your own good may be bragworthy, but it is also unethical and incompetent. Look, for instance, at comment 2 to American Bar Association Rule 1.3, which states that a “lawyer’s work load must be controlled so that each matter can be handled competently.” Your state’s rules of professional conduct likely say something similar.

So, how do you manage the unmanageable? Admit that it’s unmanageable. Determine the cause. Find your best solution—not another lawyer’s—and be ready to pivot if it does not work.

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Kristen Beightol is a founding partner of Edwards Beightol in Raleigh, N.C., and can be reached at klb@eblaw.com. The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not constitute an endorsement of any product or service by Trial ^® or AAJ^®.