Attorney in Need of Help GTD (Outlook & Palm)

[vglattn]

Tell us more about your practice. I was a lawyer in my own practice in my former life -- bk (before kids). I made lots of mistakes and learned in the process, so maybe I can help. What kind of practice do you have? How many clients?

[THart]

As I stated earlier, I am a general practitioner in a small town firm. At any one time I have domestic, probate, real estate, criminal, etc. matters as well as real estate abstracts to examine. We also represent several municipalities and government agencies. I have cases for which I am entirely responsible and then cases for which I am responsible for specific tasks but not the overall outcome.

At the moment I only have about 40 open cases, but I also have new projects/tasks come up all the time on cases for which I am not primarily responsible. The largest portion of my cases right now are domestic (divorce/custody), probate and civil litigation. But when my boss has a trial, as he has this week, I have to cover hearings and perform tasks to "put out fires" while he is unavailable. Most of my clients tend to be single matters but we have several government clients that have numerous matters.

Our firm uses Outlook for calendaring (in addition to a master desk calendar) and I synchronize my Palm to the Outlook calendar. That is why I am wanting my system to work with these applications.

[Karmapapa]

I'd recommend the following:
First, ditch the Palm & get a pocket PC. It offers unlimited categories - I think you'll need more than 15.
Set up the normal "context" categories for your next actions.
Set up the following extra categories to hold the lists of your live projects:-
"Projects - Clients"
"Projects -MBD" (Marketing & Business Development)
"Projects -PM" (Practice Management)
"Projects -KH" (Know how)
In the clients category, create a separate "task" for every live matter by its file reference & a brief decsription - e.g. CAM/534/135 - Sale of Limerick3".
This is the only area of my implementation that is not strictly orthodox GTD, since each client matter could have many GTD "projects" - but since I currently have 77 live matters I think I'd be overwhelmed if I tried to break it down further.
Stick to only one next action if possible (and in the task description if you include the matter no., you can do a search in outlook on MAC/534/135 to reveal all tasks, including completed ones). On that basis I sometimes put more than one NA in the task list; otherwise I list dependencies in the notes section of each NA/task; I also make liberal use of dated tasks and the calendar.
I believe just about every other aspect of legal practice is covered by the other 3 categories, and I treat stuff in those categories in plain vanilla GTD fashion - projects and NAs.
Other catgeories that are useful are @Agendas - [Name] for assistants/bosses; :Agendas - Team Meeting; and "Projects - Completed" (a list of all completed professional projects - purged annually after appraisal).

I prefer to have separate contexts for professional and personal as this allows you to easily filter the views on the pocket pc in Agenda Fusion or Pocket Informant). By the time you duplicate some categories (e.g. @Calls, @Computer, Someday/Maybe) you end up with e.g. 27 categories - hence the recommendation for pocket PC. Sounds a lot but it makes sense & does not require too much "maintenance".
I think the best idea is to give it a try. It'll take time inputting all the live client references as "Projects - Clients" but nobody said GTD was easy. It is worth it though.
Good luck.

[Vramin]

When the category list gets too long you have to scroll up and down to find some of them, so I prefer the length that it is (I actually use less than 15), so the Palm works well for me.

As far as the projects list goes, you could still use your categorization scheme without actually making categories. If you put the project category in front of the project name on your list they'll all sort nicely together. I often name my next actions so that they will group together in their context lists, too.

I just read chapter 41 of Ready for Anything again, "Too Controlled is Out of Control." David says sometimes we put way too much attention on "organization," and that a thorough weekly review mitigates the need for a lot of the stuff we do to stay organized.

[tomstubbs]

This is an old thread, but I am new to the forum and would love to hear updated responses. For what it's worth, for the last 17 years, I have been a solo practitioner with a litigation-focused practice. I share office space with another attorney, and he and I do some larger cases together. Last year, he and I decided to hire a young attorney who would help both of us. So, I decided it was time to reign in the chaos that had become my office. I read Getting Things Done and Making It All Work (and got the young attorney to read GTD, as well). I have used Amicus and TimeMatters. I've sworn off those programs and now just use Outlook with the Credenza add-in. (Credenza is an Amicus product, called "Amicus-Lite" by some folks. You are correct that Tom Rowe's add-ons for TimeMatters come close to making the program more GTD-like.) I also use Nozbe to track projects and tasks. (I spent a long time with several other options, from Toodledo to Remember the Milk to a host of others.) Nozbe forms the center of our GTD process. I label each project with: "Casename - Project Name." So, I don't have case files with subprojects as was outlined in the early posts, but can easily arrange the projects so I can see all of the projects for each case. Intuitively, I want my project list to be a list of projects, and it seems to me that every case has multiple projects in it. (File this motion, research this issue, interview this witness, take this deposition, etc.) So, I breach out each project separately, linking the ones associated with a case by the way I title them and by giving a label that is the case name. (Labeling is another feature of Nozbe that is useful.) I use Nozbe because of the way it handles and shows delegated tasks, it's fairly simple to use, it is well integrated with Evernote and Dropbox where I keep a lot of case material, and has good apps for my iPad and my Android phone. (I use the iPad frequently with Nozbe and the phone rarely.) An easily printable list is available of all the "next tasks" assigned to me. We track GTD's recommendations for our weekly review, going through everything from calendar to tasks and projects. I have a long way to go, but I feel we are on the right track with GTD. What are others doing now? The years since the last post have seen lots of changes and I'd be curious what you are doing.

[artsinaction]

Tom!

Great suggestion to catch us up to the present! Why don't you start a new thread so people don't have to wade through the old to find the new.

And, by the way, it sounds like you and your GTD system are already making really good progress! Do you use GTD for personal as well as business?

Dena

[amarrone]

I am also an attorney looking for advice on how to integrate GTD into my practice. My firm (25 attorneys) uses Time Matters for calendering and task management. I have slightly broken away and have setup my Outlook using David Allen's Outlook Guide (projects = Task Categories) but I am struggling with the ability to create multiple action items within a single project. I'm also looking for a way to take my tasks with me on my iPhone, and have experimented with Toodledo, but did not really like it. I am thinking of potentially making the switch to Nozbe or another 3rd party app and abandoning Outlook as my GTD action item manager. Thoughts?