Time Management For Lawyers: How Trial Teams Can Work Faster

Lawyers work an average of 53 hours per week, and yet it can feel like there’s never enough time in the day. Between client and team meetings, legal research, case strategy, and court appearances, the work schedule of a lawyer never slows down, making time management a major challenge. 

But this challenge isn’t one you can afford to ignore. Failure to work on your time management skills can impact everything from your firm's cost effectiveness to case outcomes. 

In this article, we’ll share expert-backed tips on time management for attorneys, what’s at stake when poor time management is unchecked, and the best tools to improve legal productivity. 

1. Track Your Time 

Before you can better manage your time, you need to know how you spend it. As a lawyer, you’re used to tracking your time for billable hours. But what about non-billable time? 

Use time tracking software to understand how much time you spend on certain tasks throughout the day. Some firm and case management platforms include built-in time tracking, making it easier to record your working hours in real time. 

After tracking your activities for a day or two, you may discover that you spend an inordinate amount of time reviewing transcripts. Or maybe you spend more time than you’d like catching up on emails, or attending meetings. 

Once you know where your time and attention go, you can address the issues by creating better processes or using tools to streamline certain tasks. 

2. Consider Time-Blocking 

Time-blocking is a tried-and-true method for managing your time and calendar. It involves dedicating a block of time — whether that’s 30 minutes or two hours — to a single task, or type of task. 

For legal professionals, time blocking is a good way to set aside time for case strategy, legal research, or administrative tasks like writing and sending emails. You can batch your tasks together by category, case, or any other method that makes sense for your workload. The key is to ensure it’s focused and uninterrupted, which means avoiding switching between tasks or getting distracted by phone calls and meetings. 

Some types of time blocking methods include:

• Pomodoro Technique: A time management technique that involves working in focused, 25-minute intervals, separated by five-minute breaks. 
• Eisenhower Matrix: A task management method that includes prioritizing tasks by urgency and importance. It involves dividing tasks into four categories: tasks to do first, tasks to schedule for later, tasks to delegate, and tasks to delete. 
• Day Theming: This method involves assigning specific types of tasks or projects to different days of the week. For lawyers, this could mean dedicating Mondays to case strategy, Tuesdays to trial prep, and so on.

Michael Kruse, Criminal Defense Lawyer at Kruse Law Firm, emphasizes the importance of having divided attention to avoid potential mistakes, which is particularly critical for complex criminal cases with high-stakes evidence. 

“To produce more, you must stop believing that you are a good multi-tasker,” suggests Kruse. “My firm has found the actual power to be in four hours of deep working time and at least 90 minutes assigned specifically to complex analysis.”

3. Improve Case File Organization

Improved organization is arguably one of the most impactful changes you can make if you want to work more efficiently. When you have a busy day ahead of you – reviewing pleadings, preparing and filing motions, organizing exhibits – the last thing you want to do is spend your critical working hours sifting through piles of documents, looking for a single piece of evidence. 

The best way to organize your legal files is to go digital. Digitally storing and managing your files allows you to search for a file and pull up the information you need at the moment you need it. The key is to be sure your team establishes and follows a set of organizational rules. This includes following a naming convention, color coding, and organizing files into folders and subfolders.  

With a paperless system, you can focus your time on high-priority tasks like case strategy, trial prep, and client counsel. 

4. Use AI for Administrative Tasks 

You can’t properly improve time management without addressing what takes up a significant portion of your day: administrative work. 

Our lawyer burnout survey revealed that 49% of legal professionals spend seven or more hours per week on administrative or non-specialized legal work. This includes tasks like summarizing documents, reviewing meeting notes, and managing timelines. 

One way to alleviate the burden of administrative tasks is to use automation tools to streamline them. For example, let’s say you spend a significant amount of administrative time on the discovery process — analyzing court transcripts or deposition videos to find key quotes or evidence. This is an opportunity to employ AI. 

AI tools improve legal discovery workflows by cutting down the time it takes to find a specific document, draft a discovery request, or analyze media evidence. AI transcription tools like Rev can create searchable transcripts that help you surface insights in seconds — and even uncover case-changing evidence.

5. Outsource as Needed 

Sometimes, the best and most cost-effective way to reduce your workload is by entrusting it to someone else. Legal outsourcing is becoming a common practice for firms with heavy workloads. 

Whether you hire an external court reporter or work with a transcription service, third-party services and tools can handle everything from document management and analysis to legal research. 

Before outsourcing, consider which tasks you’re comfortable handing off to someone else. Some tasks – like those directly involved in case strategy – may be better handled by your team, while administrative tasks can be outsourced. 

It’s also important to identify any potential risks involved with working with external vendors. Make sure the services you use are transparent about how they handle sensitive information and what data privacy safeguards are in place to protect your firm and your clients.

6. Enforce Schedule Boundaries

This time management strategy is particularly important in order to achieve work-life balance — or at least create time for life outside of work. While it may feel like you don’t have enough time to unwind or make a trip to the gym, for example, personal time is critical to reducing stress and potential burnout. 

Similar to time-blocking, legal professionals can enforce boundaries by blocking out time in their calendars for personal activities or creating strict working hours.

“Work-life balance in this field only exists if you enforce it,” says Robert Montanez, founding partner at  Montanez Yu Personal Injury Lawyers. “I block out exercise breaks in my calendar and treat weekends as non-negotiable time off, even in heavy trial periods. It’s the only way to stay sharp and avoid burnout.” 

The Cost of Poor Time Management

Poor time management can lead to burnout, workflow bottlenecks, and higher turnover. All of this combined can put a strain on your law firm’s efficiency and resources. 

According to our lawyer burnout survey, nearly 80% of legal professionals reported feeling burned out in the past year. What’s driving these feelings? For 47% of respondents, it’s the combination of the heavy workload and long hours that lawyers face. 

When lawyers struggle to find time for essential work and are overloaded with preparatory or administrative tasks, this has a trickle-down effect. The more stressed legal professionals feel, the more likely they are to leave their role — nearly 60% of respondents have considered leaving their role, or leaving the legal profession altogether. 

Being overworked can also have a direct impact on how well lawyers can do their jobs. For example, a burned-out attorney may not be able to advocate for clients as effectively, which can lead to case outcomes that affect those clients for the rest of their lives. 

Improving your firm’s time management skills with software like Rev has proven to be significant for trial teams. When the Banks & Brower team was faced with an overwhelming volume of video evidence from body camera footage, they had to spend hours reviewing the videos from beginning to end. On top of that, it would take up to three days to identify key moments from those videos. 

After using Rev to streamline, organize, and manage video evidence, the firm could review over 190 videos from one case and find critical moments 90% faster — from 45 minutes to just 30 seconds. 

Common Time Management Mistakes Lawyers Make

It’s easy to fall into unproductive routines, especially when your day is filled with client demands, trial prep, and endless paperwork. These are some of the most common time management mistakes legal professionals make, and practical ways to fix them.

Ignoring Time Audits

Without reviewing how you actually spend your day, it’s hard to improve efficiency or justify billable hours. Conduct a weekly or monthly time audit using time-tracking tools to identify what eats away at your time and adjust your schedule accordingly.

Taking On Too Many Admin Tasks

As our survey data highlighted, the biggest reason why lawyers lose valuable billable hours is by handling routine administrative work themselves. Time spent scheduling, billing, or preparing documents adds up – often at the expense of higher-value client work. Plus, relying too heavily on manual processes can also increase the risk of error. 

To fix this, automate repetitive tasks with legal practice management software that includes built-in time tracking, document templates, and billing integrations.

Not Setting Realistic Deadlines

Overcommitting to clients or cases can quickly lead to burnout and rushed work. To address this, build buffer time into your calendar for unexpected case developments, and communicate realistic timelines upfront with clients and your team.

Prioritizing Responsiveness Over Importance

When every email or client call feels urgent, it’s easy to prioritize responsiveness — but it shouldn’t be confused with productivity. Constantly shifting focus between priorities disrupts your focus and makes it difficult to meet deadlines or do your best work. Prioritize tasks by level of urgency or importance so critical ones don’t slip through the cracks. 

Not Leaning On The Team 

Many lawyers want to oversee every detail themselves and hesitate to delegate research, document prep, or client communications to paralegals or junior associates. But not delegating enough can lead to unnecessary bottlenecks and prevent the rest of the team from contributing meaningfully to a case. To ensure the entire firm is involved, identify routine tasks that can be handled by support staff and establish clear workflows to ensure consistency and accountability.

Resources + Tech For Increased Lawyer Productivity

Today, legal professionals have access to a wide range of software that streamlines daily tasks and helps create more productive workflows – from automating billing to improving communication and case tracking. 

Adopting just a few of these tools can free up hours each week, allowing you to focus on high-impact work like case strategy and client counsel. 

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If you’re looking for more structured guidance — for either you or your team — many online time management courses go into the topic in more depth. Coursera offers several options, including a course from the University of California, Irvine that goes over time management for personal and professional productivity.

MasterClass also offers a course on building better habits. It’s taught by James Clear, the author of the renowned book, Atomic Habits.  

How to Help Your Team Work Smarter

For law firms, productivity isn’t just about individual efficiency – it’s about creating systems that help everyone manage interruptions and work smarter. Higher productivity can help your team handle a greater case load, and ultimately conduct more impactful work with clients. 

Leaders should model good time management habits themselves – blocking focus time, delegating effectively, and prioritizing strategically – to empower their teams to work on their own time management skills. This also means being more open to incorporating tools like AI into your workflow. Not only can AI help streamline certain tasks, but it can also have a positive impact on your firm’s business development and growth. 

According to our survey data, nearly 30% of legal professionals estimate AI can create financial gains of $25,000+ a year through increased efficiency, reduced expenses, or the ability to pursue new opportunities. 

By building a work culture that values efficiency, strategy, and balance, law firm leaders can help their teams work smarter and create more time for the meaningful work that drives client success.

Redefine Busy With Rev

Being busy doesn’t have to leave your team feeling overwhelmed or burned out. With the right time management tools and systems, you can produce more focused work with fewer distractions and greater efficiency. Legal solutions like Rev help legal teams streamline critical tasks without sacrificing the quality or accuracy needed to win a case.