Most lawyers keep track of their workload sporadically across multiple forums—email threads, mental notes, legal pads, task lists, and Outlook reminders. But when work is scattered across different places, it’s easy to lose sight of the full picture:

• What’s urgent vs. what just feels urgent?

• What upcoming deadlines should you be preparing for now?

• How do proactively prepare when you have multiple deadlines or competing deadlines?

• How do you avoid overcommitting because you didn’t take into account “boomerang” work that is slated to come back to you?

Without a clear and complete view of your workload, you’re more likely to feel overwhelmed, scramble to meet deadlines, or say yes to too much work within a specific timeframe.

The key to better workload management is keeping all of your work in one central place to track all of your assignments—what’s in progress, what’s coming up, and what’s already done.

That’s exactly why I created the Workload Overview Spreadsheet for Lawyers—a simple, structured way to keep everything in one place, so you can make better decisions about your time. Within the customized and automated excel spreadsheet you receive

• One place to see and keep track of your current work assignments, deadlines, status, and priorities.

• One place to see and list your upcoming work.

• Automated Completed list that compiles all of your completed work and lists by client matter once you mark a task complete.

• Video walk through of the spreadsheet with information on how to customize it to your specific needs so that you or your assistant can maintain your spreadsheet in a few short minutes.

• Free updates. If any future updates are made to this spreadsheet you will receive an updated version at no additional charge.

*while this spreadsheet was created with private practice attorneys in mind, it can be used by most professionals. Instead of the client-matter column you can substitute client names or delete the column altogether.