How to Create a Team Calendar That Works for You

By Next Level Pod on July 13th, 2022 in Uncategorized

Scheduling your time is one of the best decisions you can make in your business.

It has certainly changed our lives. Blocking our time allows us to take breaks during the day without guilt, get more tasks done, communicate a realistic turnaround time to clients, and more. It is a seemingly simple process to implement in your law firm that will free up loads of your time. 

In a previous episode of the podcast, we talked all about the benefits of using a scheduling tool. That episode set a great foundation for why it’s so helpful to schedule your time, which tools we like, and some tips for how to best utilize them.  

Today, let’s turn from the topic of scheduling tools to that of calendaring and discuss how to set up your law firm’s calendar, block your time, and make the calendar work for you.

Why You Need More Than One Calendar

First things first: you need more than one calendar in your law firm.

If you have everything on one calendar for multiple people, every time you or a team member views it, you take on the mental load of everybody else’s tasks. You have to look at the calendar to figure out what you are personally responsible for and that can be exhausting. 

Therefore, we highly recommend that, if you have more than one or two people in your firm, you have separate calendars. You should be able to have the option to view all of those calendars at once or to sort them out.

In addition to having each person have their own calendar, it’s also very helpful to have separate calendars for all of your different appointment types. For example, maybe you’ll have a trial calendar, a deposition calendar, or a deadline calendar. These types of calendars can be very effective when you’re trying to track things across your firm. 

Marking Deadlines

We mentioned deadline calendars but it’s also very important that you physically notate on your calendar when deadlines are met. You don’t want to have to remember every time you look at your calendar whether or not a deadline was met. So mark it on the calendar each time you meet a deadline. 

Having a task] system that alerts your team when a deadline is coming up is also very helpful. That way, you don’t have to rely on that deadline on the calendar. The system can trigger you to do your work ahead of the deadline and, in this way, you become more proactive. 

Calendar Blocking

Finally, make sure you are practicing calendar blocking. This is where you mark off time on your calendar to get certain tasks done. It’s not an actual appointment but rather an amount of time you set aside to draft a brief, review discovery, or something else. 

Make sure you block off time for specific tasks. For example, instead of putting three hours on your calendar to do marketing or two hours to do administrative tasks, it’s more helpful to set aside 30 minutes to create your social media posts or two hours to do your monthly billing. 

If you want to learn more about how to set up your calendar, check out Episode 050: Calendaring.