Bill Jawitz teaches attorneys how to build satisfying practices, and how to run successful firms. He will teach a course called “Productivity Bootcamp: Time Management for Lawyers” at Solo Practice University®.

Bill Jawitz teaches attorneys how to build satisfying practices, and how to run successful firms. His program, SuccessTrack ESQ, provides a comprehensive system for rapidly building expertise in the areas of business development, productivity, personnel, finance, and leadership. Bill works exclusively with lawyers and law firms and has taught over 800 practitioners in the past 6 years ranging from solos and small firms throughout the country to the in-house legal departments at large public companies and federal agencies.

A frequent CLE presenter and In-House trainer, Bill presents seminars on topics such as:

• Productivity Boot Camp: Time Management for Attorneys
• Marketing for Attorneys: Best Practices in Client Development
• Law Office Staffing: Recruiting, Training, and Keeping a Championship Staff
• Emotional Intelligence: The Secret Law Firm Management Ingredient
• Marketing Your Practice Online: Tapping the Potential and Avoiding the Pitfalls
• Doing Well by Doing Good: Delivering Extra Value to Clients
• Mastering the Eight SuccessTrack Fundamentals for Law Firm Owners

He is a member of the ABA Law Practice Management and Solo/Small Firm sections, and the Society for Human Resource Management. He’s also on the board of the Connecticut Chapter of the National Speaker’s Association, and he’s a regular contributor to TheCompleteLawyer.com.

Bill holds a Master’s degree from Columbia University in Technology and Communications, and a BA from Quinnipiac University in Mass Media.

Prior to starting his firm in 2002, Bill was a highly regarded educator specializing in media studies. He is the author of the nation’s top-selling textbook on media literacy, Understanding Mass Media. Bill founded and ran Connecticut’s first public charter school (The Odyssey Community School, Manchester, CT) and served as the founding Technology Coach at The Learning Corridor in Hartford, CT.

Bill is an active guitarist and vocalist and performs a range of material from Cole Porter to John Lennon. He’s also a C-SPAN junkie. He and his family live on Long Island Sound, in Milford, CT.

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Syllabus – Productivity Bootcamp: Time Management for Lawyers

Session 1:  Introduction: The Myths and Truths about Productivity and Time Management

• Values, beliefs, and behaviors
• The role of time management in the context of your practice
• Your practice as a business
• Involving your staff
• Metrics and tracking your progress

Session 2: The Path to Productivity

• Capture tasks
• Isolate planning time
• Organize your information
• Schedule blocks of time
• Delegate/supervise
• Streamline procedures
• Apply standards and enforce boundaries

Session 3: “To-do Lists” That Work

               The “Five Buckets” system of capturing and organizing what needs to get done

• Production (i.e., legal work)
• Production Supervision
• Administration
• Business Development
• Personal

Session 4: Prioritizing What to Work on When

• Urgent vs. important tasks
• The 80/20 Rule
• Criteria for choosing what to do on a given day
  • • External deadlines
    • Speed to revenue and/or completion
    • Removal of impediments
    • Most satisfying
    • Best leveraging of resources
    • Best future potential
    • Best building of capacity

Session 5: Reducing Time Wasters, Distractions and Interruptions

• Sources of interruptions
  • Self imposed
  • Technology
  • Other people
• Cost of interruptions
• Reducing interruptions
• Case/client selection

Session 6: Setting Behavioral Standards for Yourself and Enforcing Boundaries for Others

• Punctuality
• Do Not Disturb Time
• Saying No
• Procrastination
• Planning Time

Session 7: The Secret Ingredient to Productivity: Focused Planning Time

• Weekly planning
• Daily planning
  1. Reviewing your buckets
  2. Reviewing your calendar for the day and next day
  3. Selecting 3 must-do’s from your buckets
  4. Estimating task time accurately
  5. Scheduling time on your calendar for those must-do’s

Session 8: Using Your Daily Calendar to Keep You on Track

• Using a “time map”
• Scheduling time for specific tasks
• Building in “communications time” for making/responding to calls and email
• Incorporating travel and court time
• Building in buffers and down-time
• Training your staff to honor your calendar

Session 9: Effective Delegation

• Overcoming barriers to delegation
• Choosing what to delegate
• Specificity of work product, time and follow-up
• Meeting regularly with delegatee for training and review

Session 10: Organizing Information

• The cost of disorganization in time, dollars, and stress
• Desk and furniture
• Paper
• Email
• Digital files
• Practice and document management software
• The role of your assistant in staying organized

Session 11: Streamlining Procedures

• Applying the 80/20 rule to improve the most common functions in your office
• Involving staff in identifying procedures to be improved
• Documenting improved procedures
• Production-specific improvements
• Admin-specific improvements
• Business development- specific improvements

Session 12: Time-Saving Tech Tools and Tips

• Roboform
• Anagram
• SnagIt
• X1
• Voice recognition
• Wireless headsets
• More cool tools