My Top Time Management Tips For Self-Employed Solicitors

Most self-employed solicitors have worked in-house. You don’t tend to go it alone until you’re an absolute expert at your job, right? But managing a business is a whole different ball game. Running a business solo means managing marketing, accounting, administration, IT, sales, and maybe even HR, while staying on top of your client work. There’s a lot to take care of outside of billable hours, and you find yourself juggling a whole range of tasks, some of which you’re unfamiliar with. What’s more, working in-house, there are often assistants supporting you to keep your focus on billable work, and paralegals taking care of more junior-level work.

Don’t panic though - as a Legal Virtual Assistant and qualified paralegal, working with multiple clients (and running my own business), managing multiple tasks and responsibilities is my area of expertise. In this article, I’ll share my top time management tips, as well as some great tools and tech, to keep all the cogs of your business turning together. Let’s get organised -

Time Management For Solicitors

Task prioritisation can be a real challenge for solicitors, whether self-employed or working for a law firm. With deadlines being crucial and a range of cases and client demands, it can be difficult to ensure nothing falls through the cracks. Here are three ways to stay organised and ahead of the workload:

Break deliverables down into bite-sized tasks - Research, casework, filing documents, meetings, etc. This will help you calculate the full scope of the work whilst splitting it into manageable tasks, providing a timeline and enabling you to keep track of progress.

Be realistic about timescales - Not only can miscalculating affect billable hours, it can also impact deadlines. So be realistic when estimating the time each task will take.

Give yourself some buffer time - As a busy solicitor, you’ll no doubt face interruptions, unscheduled demands, revisions, and last-minute meeting requests. That’s why it’s a good idea to give yourself some extra time each day for these unforeseen but necessary tasks and delays.

Tools To Help With Task Organisation

Whilst there’s nothing wrong with a trusty handwritten daily task list, there are some great online platforms and tools that can streamline daily tasks and help keep projects on track. Don’t forget, as well as managing client work, you should also be using these tools to manage tasks for your business.

Trello

A great visual work management tool. Offering the ability to create boards that document a range of tasks and allow you to drag and drop these through stages of completion, Trello is a satisfying way of tracking progress and provides a clear and colour-coded visual of your workflow.

As Trello also allows you to share your board, many of my clients use Trello to work with me to better manage workflow and task status.

Some find the basic version limited for more advanced workflows, but a handy workaround is to work from a new board each month, archiving completed tasks and adding new ones as you go.

Notion Notion is less visually pleasing than Trello, but the cards (used for each task) offer more fields and attachment options, and it’s possible to use Notion as your all-in-one CRM, task manager, and document storage hub. However, this does require more set-up time and it can be necessary to experiment until you get it set up in a way that works for you.

Monday

A project-management platform that comes with multiple features, including automation and reporting, Monday is more structured than Trello but is considered easier to navigate than Notion. However, Monday is geared towards teams and so self-employed solicitors may find many features redundant. Although, if you’re outsourcing work, to a Virtual Assistant, for instance, these sharing and co-working abilities can be highly beneficial. Clio If you’re looking for a platform built specifically for the legal profession, then there are a handful to choose from, with Clio being one. The system offers matter management, time recording, billing, compliance, client communications, and document storage. This is a higher-cost option, but is more tailored to the profession, and you may benefit from the accounting and legal-specific integrations also. If you’re seeking something similar to Clio, LEAP's legal practice management and accounting software is better suited to larger or growing firms. In addition to the above tools, there are Asana and legal-specific options, including PracticePanther and Actionstep. Many self-employed professionals also find Microsoft 365 or Google Business Suite sufficient platforms for managing their business. However, others find they get to a point where a more tailored workflow tool makes task management simpler. It’s also worth mentioning that all of these platforms enable you to invite freelancers, VAs and team members to your workspace so that you may work collaboratively on combined projects, tracking their progress too.

Balancing Business Management and Client Work

As a result of referrals and existing contacts, many newly self-employed solicitors can quickly find themselves busy with client work. Whilst very fortunate, there is a risk of getting bogged down in solicitor duties and neglecting the running of the business. Therefore, it’s very important you stay on top of administrative tasks, compliance, finances (including invoicing), filing, and business development. As well as keeping organised, you should ensure you’re taking steps to grow your business and stay visible. Whilst this can be challenging during busy periods, it will help to keep client work and enquiries coming in as projects come to a close and current client needs have been fulfilled. Here are some of my top tips for balancing business management and client work as a self-employed solicitor:

Don’t file away the business plan

Whether going self-employed or becoming a consultant solicitor, writing a business plan is essential. This should be a documentation of your goals and ambitions, and a map of how to get there. Whilst many self-employed solicitors, start-ups and small law firms will plough effort into creating an excellent business plan, it can easily be forgotten along the journey.

Metaphorically speaking, leave the business plan on your desk. Try to thumb/scroll through it once a month (put it in your diary) and ask yourself: are you still on track, are you still meeting your goals, is your business growing as planned, and what is and isn’t working. Your business plan is not fixed - it should evolve as your business evolves, so continue to adapt and build upon it. Keeping your business plan close is also a good way of reminding you to work on your business, as well as in it.

Treat your business like a client

Solicitors manage a heavy workload, with multiple clients, a huge range of tasks, and tight deadlines. So it’s no surprise that tasks you set for your business - from admin and finance to marketing and business development - are constantly shifted down the list of priorities. So this slice of advice is more of a mindset shift because if you can get into the mentality of treating your business like a client, then you’ll find yourself obliged to meet self-set deadlines and tend to your business as well as you do your client work. If you’re using a workflow system, it can be useful to document your business tasks the same way you do for clients. This will also provide you with a visual for how well you’re balancing client work and business management.

Manage your time to avoid burnout

Many go self-employed to avoid burnout. However, what with managing a business and client workload, going independent or working as a Consultant Solicitor can come with its own pressures. Whilst billable work is essential for ensuring your business thrives, it can be tempting to take on too much. The result of this is too often sacrificing wellbeing, elevating stress and risking needing to take time off to recover. Key to avoiding burnout is being tuned into the signs that you’re overworked and confronting that straight away. One solution is to decrease workload, but that can impact growth and profits, which, when you’re self-employed, means less income. However, you may also consider hiring a paralegal or assistant. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a permanent hire, as employing people in your business is a big commitment. There is another solution -

Outsourcing and Employing as a Self-Employed Solicitor

Ultimately, if you are very busy with client work or just simply detest the daily admin, the accounting, the marketing, or general maintenance of your business, then outsourcing may be the best route for you. It can also take care of junior legal work, you may not have directly performed in your career. Outsourcing can free you up to fully commit to the client work that no one else can do. To pursue the work you love, focus your expertise and build your professional reputation.

At Jam Virtual Support, we offer tailored legal and business support to self-employed solicitors, consultant solicitors, and small law firms. With 10 years of legal experience and education, we are uniquely placed to offer paralegal support and assist you across a range of tasks to keep your business operations running smoothly.

Learn more about our services and get in touch to find out how we can take the load off.