Law Firm productivity is about the number of requests. Productive legal professionals are those who perform tasks efficiently and intelligently, consequently reducing delivery time with the help of an virtual assistant for lawyers through online legal assistant services.
The term “productivity” has been much discussed in recent years. This is because people’s lifestyles have changed, including in relation to work. It’s common for professionals to seek to work less but deliver their tasks more efficiently.
Productivity is the opposite of excess. In short, productive professionals are those who can masterfully manage their time and deliver what was assigned without major difficulties. In other words, it can be considered intelligent task management.
In law firms, lawyers can boost their productivity by delegating routine tasks to other people and/or machines. Communicating with clients, for example, is a common practice that takes up part of the workday.
A very curious study by Boston College shows that reducing working hours increases productivity and reduces stress in the routine. In research, companies applied a working week of only four days, proving that time and excess are almost never related to quality delivery.
Below, learn how to boost productivity in law with tips on behaviors, tools, and more!
What is productivity at work?
Productivity at work is the way a professional executes and completes their work. The more efficient and intelligent the delivery, the more productive they appear. Furthermore, productivity is often related to time.
Productivity is also related to efficient task management. In law firms, there are common tasks, ranging from drafting a judgment to serving a client.
It is important to manage what is a priority and delegate tasks that can be carried out by someone else.
The ability to reduce each person’s workload while still delivering high-quality work is a good definition of productivity. Reducing service time is merely a consequence, not a defining factor, of this behavior.
What is the purpose of productivity?
The goal of productivity can be summarized in two ways: reducing work overload and increasing delivery efficiency. While these may seem contradictory, they can be achieved perfectly.
When a law firm balances the workload of its lawyers, cases are handled more carefully and can be completed in less time. Not to mention, it improves the professional’s quality of life.
For the company, productivity brings primarily financial returns. With more efficient deliveries, the firm stands out from its competitors and is able to capture more leads in the long term.
What determines productivity?
Productivity is determined by the amount of resources used and, sometimes, the time spent on the case. When a lawyer uses multiple people and searches in more than one system, it’s possible to notice a lack of productivity in the case’s development.
When the process is long and bureaucratic, it also ends up being less productive. Productivity is determined by ease of delivery, the resources that enable demand development, and the resulting reduction in time.
A lawyer who needs to consult case law, write a judgment, and wait for another professional to review it, for example, faces an unproductive process. GPT Chat is a tool that can shorten this entire process and leave only the review stage in the hands of the lawyer.
What are the main productivity indicators?
There are several productivity indicators that summarize the delivery status of law firms and companies in other sectors. Here are some:
- Production capacity: professionals can produce more, with quality and without work overload;
- Response time: demands are executed with less bureaucracy and, consequently, in less time (or within an acceptable period);
- Resources used: not many resources are needed, only those that are essential for the development of the work;
- Idle time: the professional does not have idle time, as efficient task management helps to optimize time and clearly understand the order of priorities.
Productivity for lawyers
For lawyers, productivity is reflected in their core business. This is because legal professionals must focus on the true essence of their work, without worrying about administrative or operational demands that may arise within their offices.
Client communication, lead management, and office task management don’t need to be left to the lawyer. Other professionals can handle this, as well as systems that automate these processes and promise to boost lawyers’ productivity.
Other, more specific tasks, such as consulting case law, can also be outsourced. There are Artificial Intelligence tools that summarize time-consuming searches, such as Chat GPT, Gemini, and other generative AIs.
These tools are also capable of creating judgments and other official documents (always with the lawyer’s review), in order to reduce the time spent writing for each case.
Importance of productivity in law
The legal sector has been booming in recent years. Faced with such high demand, law firms need to learn to optimize their routines. The number of clients is growing, overwhelming professionals and reducing the quality of service delivery. The problem can intensify when the environment is unproductive.
In this context, productivity in the legal profession is a way to reduce lawyers’ workload without compromising the quality of service. To achieve this, it’s necessary to adopt important resources, delegate less profitable tasks, and manage time more effectively.
A lawyer who spends hours responding to emails and answering the phone wastes time and money. This time should be spent preparing lawsuits and other core tasks of the profession, not dealing with third-party demands.
What negatively impacts productivity?
There are behaviors that can negatively impact productivity in the workplace (and even outside it). Sleepless nights are a prime example, leaving professionals irritable and distracted.
Furthermore, an overburdened routine can increase cortisol levels in the body. This translates into an imbalance in emotional health, with spikes in stress and tension at any time of the day.
Encouraging toxic productivity, where the professional needs to be productive at all times and cannot have moments of relaxation in the midst of the routine, also has its negative points.
Specifically in law firms, leaving lawyers responsible for tasks that aren’t part of their core business is a very negative attitude. Besides taking up the time of specialized professionals, it reduces the number of tasks that are truly profitable for the business.
Productivity tips for lawyers
Lawyers and law firms that need to improve productivity should heed the tips below:
- Task management: It’s crucial to manage daily activities based on reliable methodologies such as Kanban and the Eisenhower Matrix, among others. Prioritizing tasks can be key to a productive routine;
- Demand planning: Tasks require planning regarding how they will be executed, how long it will take (average), what the expectations are, and what the expected outcome is. This measure can improve delivery quality;
- Technology: Management and automation technology tools can reduce the lawyer’s workload and allow them to perform more important tasks that were previously neglected due to the overload of demands;
- Rest time: Like any other professional, lawyers need rest. Without it, in the long run, there may be a reduction in the quality of work and an increase in stress during the routine.
Impact of new technologies on productivity
Studies show that, in industry, the use of technology increases productivity by up to 58%. Outside of this sector, delivery improvements are also seen when technological tools are used.
New technologies have come as a lifeline to productivity. Integrated and automated systems can reduce employee workloads without replacing human labor, simply by eliminating unproductive tasks from the work routine.
Repetitive or multi-step tasks are completed in a matter of moments by machines. Meanwhile, the professional can focus on the true core of the company, without worrying about other bureaucratic tasks that arise in the work routine.
Best Law Firm Productivity Software
Efficiency in your work routine is key to achieving smart deliveries in less time and with greater profitability. In short, it’s a way to boost employee productivity.
To invest in lawyers’ work, there are tools that promise to increase productivity within law firms. Here are some:
- Notion: A tool for managing tasks and taking shared notes. Its features allow lawyers to make relevant comments and monitor progress in real time.
- Trello: A task management tool that provides a straightforward overview of all queued tasks. It can also be shared and even used by the entire office.
- Google Drive : Google’s cloud-based system, which replaces services like Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and other Office suite tools. It’s collaborative, allowing more than one person to use it simultaneously, and it’s free;
- GPT Chat: Generative AI technology that works like a conversational chat, providing responses and transforming information according to what is requested.
Conclusion
Productivity, in short, is a way to make deliveries more efficient and reduce work time. Research shows that professionals with good productivity experience less stress, in addition to generating more revenue for their businesses.
In the legal field, lawyers can boost productivity with the help of technology. For this, there are management tools, AI, and other interesting alternatives. However, it’s important to have a good work routine and a healthy lifestyle to keep your mind and body healthy.
What needs to be demystified regarding productivity is the amount of work. For a long time, it was believed that a productive professional was one who performed many tasks; however, today, the picture is different.
The better the management of law firms, the greater the productivity of the environment. And not just within the workplace, but also in other aspects of life.