It’s the new year, and many people are setting goals to be more organized and on-schedule in 2018. If you’re a busy lawyer or law student, it can sometimes be difficult to keep track of all your responsibilities, deadlines and goals on a daily basis. And without a way to stay organized, the tyranny of the urgent may threaten to crowd out any plans you have for personal enrichment. Technology can play a big role in helping you stay on task and meeting your education, job and personal goals. Here are some technological resources that can help you organize your personal and professional life in 2018.
Keep Your Calendar Organized
A calendar app is a must-have for any legal professional or law student. With a calendar app, you can tag and color-code events, choose a duration for your event and share your calendar with colleagues to keep everyone on the same page. One of the most popular options is Google Calendar, which is free. If you want to try something different, consider apps like Planner Pro, Timepage by Moleskine, or Accompany (which creates profiles about people you’re meeting).
Stay on Top of Your To-Do List
A digital to-do app can make all the difference in both your professional and personal life. Consider something simple but powerful, like ToDoist or Wunderlist, which sends you notifications and allows you to create projects and labels.
If you need to organize projects with many people, whether you’re at work or school, you might need something a little more robust. That’s where a product like Asana comes in handy. Asana lets you and your teams keep track of all your projects in one place. Other robust apps to consider include Trello and Zoho Projects.
Keep Updated with the Latest Legal News
Right now there isn’t one app that keeps you updated on all changes in legal news. But you can do some behind-the-scenes work to help stay on top of things. For example, find legal publications that you prefer, such as Jurist or the ABA Journal, and follow them on Twitter. Look up your local and state courts and find out if they have Twitter accounts or email subscriptions. On Twitter, you can choose to get mobile notifications from your most important Twitter accounts and never miss a thing. You can also setup a Feedly account, which will organize and aggregate news feeds based on topic/news source.
Organize Your Notes
Evernote is a great product for organizing notes. You can write notes about anything you want and organize them via tags and notebooks. Additionally, you can also save archives of webpages, take screenshots, scan business cards and more, storing them all in the same location. You can add reminders for projects, and search all your notes and business cards at once. Evernote lets you work in a team setting, so you can share notes with colleagues and friends.
Client Portals
If you’re an attorney, you can save a lot of time by using a client portal (or making sure that your case management platform has an integrated client portal.) You can designate which documents your clients can access. They can log in and check on the status of their case anytime. They can also do financial tasks, such as determining how much of their retainer is left or paying invoices. Some portals even include encrypted communication options.
Digital Scanning
The days are gone when you need to use a slow multifunction printer to scan documents. Now you can use an app to scan documents and even handwritten notes on the go. One of the most popular apps is CamScanner, which scans your papers, as you prefer, as PDFs or images.
Get a Notary Online
Sometimes getting a document notarized can be a time killer. Now you can use, NotaryCam, an app that lets you upload a document and connect live to a notary via your webcam. Read the legal specifications here.
As you can see, there is a myriad of ways that you can stay organized in 2018. From a detailed to-do list to an automated legal assistant, all you need is the right technology at your fingertips.
Attract & Retain Top Talent
With a rapidly changing industry, it's vital to offer the right compensation and set the right expectation. With our Salary Guide, get detailed job descriptions, industry insights and local salary data to equip your managers with hiring confidence and expertise.
Get your copy »