Chicagoan Sue Becker has worked with over 1,000 clients in the 15 years she has been at the helm of Spark Productivity. Upwards of 90 percent of her customers are professionals, and she has worked with them both in their brick and mortar offices and in their home-based workspaces, as well.

While all professionals benefit from an organized work area and a well-managed calendar, the practice of law calls for additional attention to detail, says Becker.

Just Do It

Getting organized is not an overnight project. “Don’t feel like it’s all or nothing,” Becker advises. She suggests creating a plan detailing the steps the lawyer plans to take to organize their law offices, desks and other work spaces.

“Think about what’s not working and attack it. Don’t just clean off your desk without creating an overall plan on where things belong,” she says.

According to Parks, steps a lawyer should take when seeking to organize their office include:

• Be proactive rather than reactive in focusing on your priorities and gaining control of each workday
• Simplify your approach to task management to move more things from “To Do” to “Done”
• Implement the adage of “location, location, location” to assign each item in your office an exact place to be kept
• Capitalize on “The Power of One.” Sometimes it’s normal to feel overwhelmed if you have to tackle a project alone, but Parks suggests working alone can actually be “very powerful.”

Melanie Dennis, a certified professional organizer for 11 years, has worked with hundreds of clients as owner of Columbus-based Neat Streak. She urges lawyers not only to create a document retention policy, but to implement it, too. Knowing how long lawyers are required to keep a client’s file is imperative, so check the rules of ethics in your state for direction, she suggests.

Knowing how long a lawyer is required to retain a client file is key because “decisions are made for you,” says Dennis. Once the retention period passes, and the attorney is no longer required to keep a file, get rid of it, she says. A key element of maintaining a document retention policy is having personnel to oversee it so it doesn’t go by the wayside.

Becker is a huge proponent of delegating tasks to improve efficiency. While she recognizes that’s easier in a large firm setting, where support staff is available to help conquer clutter, keep files organized and more, even the solo attorney can learn to delegate.

“Even if it comes down to hiring administrative staff or a virtual assistant,” it’s wise to hire people to help the busy lawyer accomplish their many goals, says Becker.

The Benefits of Being Organized

Being organized helps anyone, lawyer or otherwise, be more productive, says Becker. Being productive translates into greater profitability, and not just financially speaking. For example, being more productive means the lawyer is “serving more clients, moving cases along, being on time for court dates and not letting things lag,” Becker says.

Another benefit of being organized is the self-confidence it instills in the lawyer. Not only can the organized lawyer be confident they can easily find client documents and files, clients themselves gain a positive impression, too. An organized office gives the impression the lawyer won’t lose important documents, notes, disk drives or other materials given them to handle a case.

Maintaining a well-organized workspace also instills a sense of control over one’s environment. There is also no need to worry about forgetting something, missing a deadline or dropping a commitment to a client, says Parks.

The Psychology of Organization

According to Dennis, “people can get depressed by their disorganized work spaces. It feels heavy.” In fact, she says, being unorganized can impact a person’s physical well-being in very real ways. If routine dusting doesn’t occur because too much clutter has accumulated, people are breathing that in, she says.

“I’ve been in homes so dusty, people there needed inhalers,” says Dennis.

She says there’s a psychology to cutting the clutter. Sometimes, people hold on to office décor, files, magazines and more because they gain a sense of security from being surrounded by ‘stuff.’ Hopefully they can gain a different sense of contentment from their newly organized workspace, she says.

Not being organized can also impact how well a lawyer represents their clients. Working in a cluttered environment leads to “not meeting client’s needs, falling short of others’ expectations and poor outputs,” says Parks.

“Getting started is the hardest part,” Dennis states. “Often an inertia is ignited when you take that first step. It’s easier to put something in its place than having to search for it,” she says.

Tami Kamin Meyer is an Ohio attorney and writer.