Litigators, Small Law Firms

Praise Scheduling And Make It Work For You -- Or Quit Now

Litigators are slaves to the calendar more than most professionals, with schedules often determined largely not by them, but by courts, arbitrators, legislators, and clients.

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Litigators are slaves to the calendar more than most professionals, and with schedules often determined largely not by them, but by courts, arbitrators, legislators, and clients. Figure out how to make it work for you, or you will never succeed as a litigator.

As people hustle off to vacation (well, at least some) and while there are now the typical summer articles about how we’re ever more connected to work, one of the primary realities of a litigator comes to mind: we need to maintain good schedules if we want to succeed.

All professionals and most westerners worry about schedules. And with real-time synchronization of our data, along with 64 Crayola colors for our many family, work, health, social, and goodness knows what other calendars on our phones, on our tablets, and on our workstations, contemporary life for many is characterized (some might say polluted) by overscheduling.

Lawyers fall victim to this at least as much as any other professionals. After all, we were the ones in college who likely were particularly anal about our social calendars (I remember making a note in my pocket calendars on the nights I went dancing; women I dated appropriately mocked this) and plotted out the next 67 years of our existence before we could legally drink alcohol.

But, if I may manipulate Shakespeare’s line, I come not to bury scheduling, but to praise it. Scheduling your days but, more, your weeks and your months is a necessary skill all litigators must develop else they will not succeed (nor, as I’ll discuss in a few weeks, get the breaks we all need and should enjoy).

Our work is defined by deadlines. These come from statutes which put limits on how long we have to bring claims. They come from general court rules, which, in just one complex federal case, could include the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Local Rules for the District Court where your action proceeds, the standing orders or individual practice rules of both your District Judge and your Magistrate Judge, and the general rules issued by a discovery referee. They come from specific scheduling or case management orders. And, obviously, they come from client needs and demands. Scheduling is everywhere in our work and, it would seem, it is beyond our control.

But it is not beyond our control. With some thoughtfulness and a habit of practice to make scheduling a priority, you and your colleagues can ensure you comply with all deadlines, get your work done, enjoy that work (as long as you have the right leadership in your law office), reduce unnecessary stress, and get needed time away from work. You can work things out with adversaries to get a schedule that is sensible. Most courts will be very accommodating to busy schedules (provided you respect their time, raise concerns early, and treat everyone else’s schedule the way you’d like yours treated).

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And while hour-to-hour, day-to-day scheduling may be important to some, knowing how your weeks and months look is important to all. We cannot start a complex brief two days before it is due. But we anyway cannot work on that brief in isolation, as it comes as part of work on a case that involves counseling to clients, taking depositions, interacting with co-counsel, and 50 other things.

Indeed, the work on that brief and that case itself is not isolated but part of the work that not only one lawyer but, very likely, a team of professionals must accomplish in a given time. If we do not handle scheduling, we do not get the work done we must, we will not serve clients, and we tick off our colleagues. We must make good scheduling part of our best practices.

How do we do this? That’s not simply beyond the scope of this article—where I want to go against the anti-scheduling trend, at least for litigators, and at least for our work— but beyond the scope of good advice I believe anyone can give someone else. Different things work for different people. Each lawyer needs to figure out what works for her.

I have those multicolored calendars as I have several children and a big family so personal scheduling is its own challenge, and something I don’t want to interfere with work. Work for me means not only trying cases and arguing appeals, and not only counseling clients and leading litigation teams, but meeting with colleagues and new potential clients. I need all these calendars, which I flip on and off, and to which others sometimes have access and sometimes don’t, if I want to get it all done and have fun in the process.

Others at our firm do it differently. One lawyer uses a small leather notebook where he writes down everything. Another uses the clichéd Post-Its and then makes a calendar entry with daily tasks. A non-lawyer at the firm uses the color calendars I do, but on steroids such that I get frightened when I look at his work station.

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The differences do not matter. What matters is that each of these methods works for each of the professionals involved. Each professional has her or his own personal system, which she or he tweaks over time (and after seeing how their colleagues complete the same task). Each thus succeeds in maintaining their schedules, working with their colleagues, and winning their cases.

Be thoughtful about scheduling or you will fail as litigator. Schedule well, and you will succeed—and have fun and get the time away from work you need not only as a person, but to ensure you have the true break from work you need to be the best litigator you can be.

John Balestriere is an entrepreneurial trial lawyer who founded his firm after working as a prosecutor and litigator at a small firm. He is a partner at trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at john.g.balestriere@balestrierefariello.com.

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