It's a marathon, not a sprint

Eliud Kipchoge entered the history books becoming the first man to run a marathon in under two hours, an absolutely awesome feat. He is the first to admit that it was a “team effort”. He made sure that he had the right people around him. From creating his nutrition plan and training regime, to ensuring the best equipment and the right process to ensure the most efficient way to run the race, they had everything worked out. Training complete, he then had to execute the plan on the day. But he didn’t do it alone. He couldn’t. He ran with carefully selected pacemakers who ran in a very specific formation to maximise the efficiency of his running, and ran the race in the best time ever.

Kipchoge’s motto is “There is no success without sacrifice”.

Have you ever trained for a marathon? There is plenty of sacrifice required. Precious time spent on the roads and trails, looking to initially build up an endurance base which will allow you to last the 26.2 miles distance the race demands, and that’s just to get to the finish line. Unless you are just doing it for fun, you’ll probably have in mind a time you would like to complete it in – or “beat”. So, you practise with that in mind. You don’t need to be Kipchoge to understand that a great way to improve your chances would be to train with someone who has done it before, someone who gives you a process, can show you how and support you as you sacrifice your time and energy to push your body to keep improving.

Plan your work performance

Your career is just like that marathon. You trained very hard to become a lawyer. You put in the hours and sought out the best tutors and mentors so that when you finished your training you were ready for the big race. But who are you taking on that race with you, to ensure that you get the most out of all that training? Who are the team you will surround yourself with to ensure you get the best work done in the most efficient way possible?

With the regularity and consistency of training you allow your body to practise its way to peak fitness as the culmination of the effort brings a fitness reward, because let’s be honest, very few of us can even think about reaching even remotely close to that distance in under two hours. This would be time spent in the office or at home with family. What if there were smarter ways to work which meant that this time, which would normally be wasted with repetition or inefficiency, can be increased by bringing automation to the processes and removing the manual repetition on everyday tasks?

As daylight becomes a thing of the past and we head into the deepest part of winter as the clocks have changed, spring marathon build-ups and preparations for the new business year are starting to take shape. Planning will become a large part of the process to success.

Let CaseLoad take the load

CaseLoad has been designed to effectively do most of the thinking around what needs to be achieved daily and weekly to work towards goals and targets. Which in turn, leads to more time for non-work-related activities. This might be like a weekly mileage target in the marathon training, or a WIP target set by your department.

A recent client meeting cited an example where they said producing documents such as a power of attorney now takes minutes instead of hours, meaning they can serve more clients throughout the working day. This leads to less time in the office outwith normal hours, and their clients are now receiving a slick, modern experience.

Peter Mason, director at MacLeod & MacCallum, said: “When we were researching software providers the thing that stood out for us on the Denovo website was a promise of time saving. That’s really what every firm wants. Since choosing the system I’m delighted to say that’s definitely been the case for us.

“We have been able to use the document production system to give us huge efficiencies – saving staff time and management time. Using approved document templates means we no longer need to do this manually. The saving in time has allowed us to reallocate staff time to other tasks: rather than focusing on mundane duplication of documents, this can now be done in seconds. This allows staff to be more client facing, which is what they really want to do.

“We’ve also set up an internal IT support group to help us improve our working practices. Previously we would have had no chance to do this because our staff would be too busy typing.

“We didn’t want to be guilty of using the system superficially, as many firms are. We recognised that creating a group focused on getting the most out of the system would allow us to be more efficient and give members of the group an opportunity to educate the wider team.

“With workload production being more streamlined our team are now able to provide an improved turnaround time for clients, and still be able to leave the office at a reasonable hour to spend time with their families and doing the things they really want to be doing in their own time outside of work. It has undoubtedly helped the work-life balance of our staff.”

Some wizard magic

Now you can avoid timewasting repetition. Let Caseload’s wizard do the work. Enter client data into CaseLoad just once, and avoid re-typing information to allow you to focus on what matters – your cases. The power of having the best legal document preparation software inside of your case management system ranges from never re-typing an address into a document again to automatic paragraph inclusion based on your facts and parties. Whole document packs can be created within a few steps using the document production wizard.

With the capability to build automated legal forms and get documents out of the door with the help of legal document software, the more volume you can take and the more profit you can generate for your firm.

Now it’s up to you. Make smart changes to spend your time focusing on serving the law or making that marathon start line in a much happier place. With consistent training, focus and support from Denovo you can deliver remarkable results. Make the sacrifices in the right places on your journey to a happier work-life balance.