Task list
You should always have a notebook to hand when meeting supervisors in a professional setting, as you never know when they’re going to start giving you instructions, feedback or advice. However, whilst notebooks are good for capturing detailed instructions, they are not so good for giving you an overview of what needs to be done and helping you to prioritise different matters and tasks. Once you have taken detailed notes of your instructions, consider summarising the specific tasks deriving from those instructions on a shorter to-do list, alongside the tasks that you have been set on other matters. You could then try to get in the habit of updating this to-do list at the end of each day, so that you know what needs to be done when you come in the next morning. This will help you to manage deadlines and any capacity requests that subsequently come in.
Try to break larger tasks down into a series of smaller, more manageable tasks. This can help you to better prioritise tasks and keep track of your progress more effectively (whilst also making the tasks seem less daunting). For example, rather than simply writing “Prepare presentation” on your to-do list, you could use “Presentation” as a heading, then split this into sub-tasks, for instance: research topic x, find a PowerPoint template, discuss the topic with my supervisor, write a first draft of my speech, work on the PowerPoint slides.
You should also keep a list of what you are waiting for from other people – for example documents, input, advice or sign-off – and get in the habit of regularly reviewing it. If you miss a deadline because someone else has forgotten to get back to you (or if you submit an incomplete or incorrect piece of work because you forgot that you were waiting for input or sign-off), this won’t reflect well on you. Such a list will also help you to keep track of who you need to chase and when you should chase them. It might also be helpful to keep a note of any “deferred” tasks, for example tasks that you know you will need to complete at some point in the future once some other action has been completed (e.g. tasks that must be carried out only once a deal closes or once a case reaches a certain stage in the litigation process).
Practical tip: try to avoid writing tasks on random sheets of paper/post-it notes, as it can be hard to keep track of a fragmented collection of reminders and the approach might not inspire confidence in your supervisors (I was called up on this during my training contract). You never know quite how long and complex a set of instructions will be, plus as tasks progress, you may need to add details to instructions that you have previously written down, which will be difficult if you have used a series of small sheets of paper.
Calendar
Use your calendar wisely. Make sure your appointments are all set up with reminders and get in the habit of checking your calendar at the start of each day (and if necessary, the night before) so that you can keep track of how much time you actually have available to work on legal matters. This can help when managing capacity requests and keeping your supervisors informed of your progress. For instance, one morning you may be given a task that you think will take seven hours. However, if you tell your supervisor that you will deliver the work in seven hours’ time, then discover that you have a three hour training session in the afternoon, you will end up missing your deadline and messing that supervisor around. This is easy to avoid!
You can also use your calendar to keep track of deadlines. Try to get in the habit of Immediately including any major deadlines in your calendar, and perhaps set reminders leading up to those deadlines (one week before, one day before, and so on). Also consider inputting deadlines (and reminders of those deadlines) that you have set other people, including team members, lawyers in other offices, and clients. This could include, for example, deadlines for others to provide input into a due diligence report, or deadlines for others to circulate documents they have been tasked with sourcing or producing.
This should help you to remember to chase others when appropriate (don’t be afraid to politely chase as these deadlines approach, as if someone else misses a deadline and you didn’t proactively chase them, you may be blamed as much as they are). In addition, consider setting recurring reminders for tasks that you have to carry out repeatedly, for example checking a data room every morning whilst project managing a document review exercise, filling in your timesheets at the end of each day, or arranging weekly team training sessions.
Email and document filing
Every time you deal with an email, make sure you file it immediately. Aim to have an inbox that only shows emails that you have not yet dealt with, as this will mean that your inbox serves as a back-up task list. Don’t rely on leaving emails as “unread”, as it is easy to accidentally mark these as read and then forget about them. This approach was truly game-changing when it came to organising myself and I still use it to this day. I genuinely can’t recommend it enough, so try to get in the habit!
Consider setting up email folders for each team you sit in, each matter you work on within those teams, and even different aspects of the matters you work on (e.g. due diligence, transaction documents, stages in litigation proceedings, research etc.). You could also set up folders relating to corporate social responsibility/pro bono, human resources/graduate recruitment, firm announcements, miscellaneous etc. This way, you will have somewhere to file every email that you’ve already read and (if applicable) dealt with, meaning your inbox will only display the emails that you haven’t yet got around to dealing with.
An intuitive email filing system is also important as you will likely be asked by supervisors at times to retrieve old emails from clients, lawyers and other parties. It may be difficult to remember which specific contacts emailed you a few months previously and subject lines may be unhelpful, so without a decent filing system, it could take a long time to locate a specific email. Similarly, you are likely to be asked to find certain documents (and perhaps historic versions of those documents) throughout a training contract, so don’t just set up broad folders for different client matters on your desktop (or your firm’s centralised workspace). Set up sub-folders for certain elements of each matter so that documents can be quickly retrieved at a later stage.
Practical tip: try to get in the habit of unsubscribing from newsletters that you don’t read, as spam can be very distracting and you will likely otherwise waste ample time having to repeatedly delete/file these emails.
Summary
To summarise, I found it useful to: