Facing a busier than ever week ahead? Use these steps to figure out how to prioritize when you are overwhelmed. Here’s my week: I have three transactions closing on Friday and I need to work on them all right now. One is not more important than the other. I have two articles due today by the end of business, both of which require my immediate attention. I am changing jobs and must figure out my medical insurance. Of course, I need to call during business hours to do that, and I have to accomplish this by Thursday or I won’t have coverage. Also: There are two contracts that needed to be reviewed last week that I still haven’t looked at, one client who needs revisions to his estate planning documents so he can sign on Friday before he travels out of the country, and another client who is very ill and needs legal advice regarding her will. Plus, my daughter has back-to-school activities, needs to be driven to her extracurricular programs — and we adopted a puppy! How the heck am I supposed to prioritize when everything is important and needs to be handled at the same time? Help! Five Steps for Figuring Out How to Prioritize It All Here’s what I do when I am faced with times such as this, when there is too much to do and no easy way to prioritize. 1. The first step is to breathe. When we take deep breaths, it calms our bodies and minds so that we can think more clearly and make better decisions. Deep breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the “rest and digest” system that allows us to remain calm in the midst of the chaos of our busy lives. Once we are calm, we can

For law firms, streamlined, effective legal billing software is incredibly important. Enter modern legal billing software. It ensures that your firm’s legal billing processes are efficient and accurate by reducing the steps needed to invoice clients and accept online payments. Read on to learn about the most common billing problems law firms face, and how to help your law firm overcome them. Hurdle 1: Missed Billable Time Best Practice 1: Capture Time Automatically Using legal billing software, lawyers in your firm can track their billable time from any internet-enabled device using multiple timers, making it easy for them to enter billable time no matter where they happen to be. Another legal billing software timesaver is the ability to take advantage of default billing activity descriptions when entering billable time. After all, the easier it is for your attorneys to create a time entry, the more likely they are to do it. Hurdle 2: Growing Time Investment Best Practice 2: Batch Bill + Automate Time Reconciliation A single centralized billing software solution solves this problem. With all of the billing data collected and stored in one online location, it’s a simple process to create invoices from the billable time entered into the system, send multiple invoices at once, and accept online payments from clients within that same software. No more duplicate data entry or reconciliation across software tools; robust legal billing software does all of that for you! Hurdle 3: Payment Inaccessibility Best Practice 3: Eliminate Common Roadblocks to Client Payment The simplest way to make it easy for clients to pay is to provide multiple online payment options for your firm’s clients. Not only will your firm get paid faster, but your clients will also have more choices when it comes to paying their legal bills. In other words, it’s

When Janelle came to us, she was running her busy litigation practice off an 18-page to-do list she kept on a yellow pad on her desk. I’m sure you can picture that list. Frayed edges. Tasks jotted down in the margins while she talked on the phone. Assignments written on little flags sticking out of the sides. Things crossed off in red and other things highlighted with a rainbow of colors. Every time Janelle looked at that list, her stress levels went through the roof. Sure, most of her tasks were there, but she had to flip through multiple pages to remember what she’d assigned to whom and then go through her emails for the latest information. Tasks and to-dos related to a single matter were scattered across the pages. Dates were meaningless. And she’d completely forgotten what the highlight colors meant. Janelle was coping but she wasn’t managing, much less managing effectively. She was constantly chasing people for updates because she was worried about missing something, and she wasn’t sure if her team had the bandwidth to take on new work. Without clear insight into how work moves through your firm, you’re running your practice in the dark. You can’t see who’s working on what (and neither can anyone else).You don’t know where matters stand at any given time.You don’t know if you’ve got the capacity to take on more work.You can’t answer clients’ questions quickly when they call or email you for a status update. The result: You take on work when you don’t have the capacity for it, everyone ends up working crazy hours, and your best employees burn out.You commit to deadlines you can’t meet, driving your stress levels through the roof, working too hard, and sacrificing personal events that are important to you.You don’t spot