Unlocking the Power of Self-Discipline for Greater Achievement
Procrastination is a universal experience. Almost everyone has experienced at least one moment where they have put off an important task in favour of something more interesting, like a book, article, or video. In the worst cases, it can be in favour of simply doing nothing. However, while satisfying in the moment, acting on such impulses often leads to heightened anxiety, stress, and pressure later on. The key to breaking free from this cycle lies in self-discipline, enabling us to achieve more while reducing stress.
The Power (and Struggle) of Self-Discipline.
Self-discipline is defined as the ability to consciously resist impulses in pursuit of long-term goals. It is a highly influential characteristic in professional development and success. Research by psychologist Angela Duckworth has shown that self-discipline is a more potent predictor of academic achievement in adolescents than intelligence, significantly impacting final grades, attendance, and homework completion. Additionally, self-discipline is linked to positive career outcomes, contributing to both occupational success and satisfaction.
Self-discipline is undoubtedly important. Yet, it is a struggle for many. Research has revealed that self-control ranks low among character strengths in both adults and children, scoring 22nd out of 24 in the UK and last in the USA. Duckworth attributes this to the difficulty of balancing resources between our present desires, such as social interactions (spurring the urge to check your social media), and our future aspirations.
The ability to hone self-discipline is essential for achieving your professional goals and living up to your full potential. The good news is that self-discipline is a habit that can be cultivated over time. While it might be challenging to start, the more we practise it, the stronger and more automatic it becomes. And the stronger your self-discipline, the more you will experience changes in your professional life and mental health.
Today we will share our favourite tricks to help you improve your self-discipline and work smarter.
1: Find What Is Tempting You and Self-Monitor
To cultivate self-discipline, it is essential to recognise that it is personal. Everyone has distinct temptations and tendencies. For example, some individuals may struggle to control their social media usage, while others may spend their time watching TV series. Identifying these barriers to self-control is a vital first step in developing strategies tailored to address your specific weak points.
Furthermore, identifying your temptations will allow you to self-monitor, tracking your behavioural patterns throughout the day. This allows you to determine whether your strategy is successful or requires refinement.
By personalising your approach to self-discipline and self-monitoring, you lay a strong foundation, allowing you to devote your energy to effectively enhance your self-control to achieve your goals and improve your professional outcomes.
2: Look to the Future
According to Duckworth, having a goal-oriented mindset is fundamental to improving your self-control. Research studies have shown that setting specific, difficult goals enhances performance, especially when these goals are made public or shared in a group. Setting goals enables you to focus your attention on a specific outcome, and effectively allocate resources to its achievement.
Furthermore, breaking down a goal into smaller, more manageable sub-goals, has been linked to higher levels of productivity and commitment by making tasks appear more doable. This can enable you to maintain your motivation and sense of progress when working towards challenging goals.
Once these goals are set, it is crucial to create a plan for their achievement. A proposed strategy for planning is known as mental contrasting and implementation intentions. This visualisation technique involves envisioning the positive outcomes associated with your goals and contrasting them with the current obstacles standing in your way. Through this process, you gain valuable insights that inform a detailed plan to tackle these obstacles effectively. Studies have linked employment of this strategy to significant increases in achievement and motivation.
By adopting a goal-oriented mindset and implementing strategies like mental contrasting and implementation intentions, you equip yourself with tools to overcome obstacles and achieve your professional goals. This will empower you to resist impulses and approach your work with more self-discipline.
3: Manipulate Your Environment
Sometimes the easiest way to exercise self-discipline is to change your environment in a way that dampens a temptation. Doing this is known as a situational strategy for self-control, and is observable when someone hides their phone away at work, or puts up controls to prevent procrastinatory webpages from being accessed on their computer. In taking steps to remove the temptation from your environment, you are reducing the salience of the temptation in your mind, and minimising your impulse generation associated with low self-control. This will allow you to regulate your impulses and focus your attention on your work to achieve more.
4: Practise Healthier Living
A healthy lifestyle significantly contributes to improved self-discipline. We’ve all had that day where we felt like we couldn’t think clearly due to a lack of sleep, or skipping a meal. It is in these situations where our self-control seems to diminish the most, and this is because a healthy mind is essential for mental clarity and good decision making. Therefore, regular exercise, a balanced diet, and quality sleep are all vital for enhancing self-control. This will also help you to build a foundation for better self-discipline in the future.
5: Engage in Mindfulness
Mindfulness strengthens self-discipline by increasing self-awareness and curbing impulsivity and stress. Embrace mindful meditation to observe thoughts and emotions without judgement, fostering a calm and focused mindset. This will allow you to “surf the urge” without needing to act on your impulses. Simple deep breathing exercises serve as powerful tools to stay focused in challenging situations, empowering you to make deliberate choices rather than succumbing to distractions or negativity. By incorporating mindfulness into your daily routines, you enhance focus and self-control, reducing procrastination to pursue your long term professional goals.
As you implement these practices, you will hone your self-discipline, enabling you to achieve your full potential in your work. Remember, it's a journey of progress, not perfection, and implementing even one of these techniques will bring you one step closer to achieving your professional goals. Ready to work smarter?
References
- Duckworth, A.L. and Seligman, M.E.P. (2005) ‘Self-discipline outdoes IQ in predicting academic performance of adolescents’, Psychological Science, 16(12), pp. 939–944. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01641.x.
- Choi, I. et al. (2018) ‘Comparing two roads to success: Self-control predicts achievement and positive affect predicts relationships’, Journal of Research in Personality, 76, pp. 50–63. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2018.07.001.
- Park, N., Peterson, C. and Seligman, M.E. (2006) ‘Character strengths in fifty-Four nations and the fifty US states’, The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1(3), pp. 118–129. doi:10.1080/17439760600619567.
- Duckworth, A.L., Milkman, K.L. and Laibson, D. (2018) ‘Beyond willpower: Strategies for reducing failures of self-control’, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(3), pp. 102–129. doi:10.1177/1529100618821893.
- Duckworth, A.L. et al. (2013) ‘From Fantasy to Action: Mental Contrasting With Implementation Intentions (MCII) Improves Academic Performance in Children’, Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4(6), pp. 745–753. doi:10.1177/1948550613476307.
- Duckworth, A.L., Gendler, T.S. and Gross, J.J. (2016) ‘Situational Strategies for self-control’, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(1), pp. 35–55. doi:10.1177/1745691615623247.
- Savage, M., Boni, G. and Duckworth, A. (2022) The mental hacks that level up your self-control, BBC Worklife. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191217-the-mental-hacks-that-level-up-your-self-control
Productivity Hacks to Help You Get More Out of Your Workday
In today's fast-paced world, we are constantly striving to accomplish more. However, working longer hours isn't always the answer. The key lies in knowing productivity hacks that help you work smarter, not harder.
What sets working hard apart from working efficiently?
Working hard typically means spending long hours and putting vast effort into a project. However, this does not necessarily mean you are making good use of your time, nor does it guarantee positive outcomes. When you work efficiently, you focus your energy on the highest-priority tasks and streamline your workflow to accomplish them promptly and effectively. This maximises your output while minimising your wasted time and effort. Sounds good, right?
In this article, we will share some of our favourite productivity hacks to help you make the most of your workday and achieve your goals without sacrificing your personal life or well-being.
Hack 1: Identify Your Most Productive Time
The time of day can significantly impact our energy levels and overall productivity. Understanding our body's natural rhythms can help us determine when we are most alert and focused. Everyone's productive time may vary, so it's crucial to pay attention to when you are the most energised (hint: for most, it's during the morning!). This will allow you to capitalise on your high-energy periods and tackle essential tasks that require full attention. By focusing on less demanding activities, you can also avoid wasting precious minutes during your low-energy time. Finding and utilising your productive time can increase efficiency and success, whether it's early morning, midday, or later in the evening.
Hack 2: Prioritise Your Tasks
When faced with a heavy workload, it's easy to feel overwhelmed and unsure where to start. In these cases, one of the most effective things to do is prioritising your tasks. By organising your to-do list, you ensure that you tackle the highest priority tasks first. This allows you to make progress on meaningful projects and avoid the stress and anxiety that comes with procrastination.
The Eisenhower Matrix is a handy tool that helps categorise tasks based on urgency and importance. Using this matrix, you can identify which tasks to tackle when you set up your work day. Setting clear goals and deadlines for each task is also crucial. This helps maintain your focus and motivation, knowing that you have specific targets to meet. Creating lists or using templates can make prioritisation even easier, as you can visually see and rearrange your tasks. You can attain your goals and increase your productivity by prioritising effectively.
Use the Eisenhower Matrix to decide which tasks to accomplish first (credit: Blaz Kos)
Hack 3: Minimise Distractions
We all know how tempting it can be to constantly check your phone for notifications while working. Such distractions significantly impact our ability to complete tasks efficiently. Turning off notifications and creating a dedicated workspace free from interruptions is helpful to combat this. You can better concentrate on your work to accomplish your goals by eliminating these distractions. Setting clear goals and deadlines for each task is also crucial, as it helps you stay motivated and ensures that you're working towards attainable objectives.
Hack 4: Manage Your Energy and Avoid Burnout
It can be difficult to continue your work when you are low on energy. While pushing ourselves to the limit is tempting, working non-stop can diminish our overall effectiveness. This is because having low energy disrupts your focus. Therefore, it's essential to listen to your body and prioritise self-care. Take regular breaks throughout the day to recharge and rejuvenate. Engage in activities that replenish your energy, such as exercise, mindfulness, or time outside. Additionally, ensure you get enough sleep each night to optimise cognitive function and maintain a healthy work-life balance. By managing your energy levels and preventing burnout, you'll sustain your productivity in the long run and be better equipped to tackle tasks with focus and efficiency.
Hack 5: Use Productivity Tools
Technology is an extremely helpful tool for streamlining your workflow and enhancing your productivity. One tool is Casedo, our user-friendly document organisation solution. With Casedo, you can effortlessly store, bundle, and mark up your documents in one workspace. This saves you time and effort, allowing you to effortlessly make sense of your documents. This software will enable you to maximise your productive time and avoid wasting minutes on disorganised tasks during your workday. It's a completely effortless way to stay organised and increase productivity.
Using a tool like Casedo can simplify and streamline your workflow
Implementing productivity hacks is essential for reducing time wastage and increasing efficiency during your workday. Start implementing these hacks and experience the freedom that comes with working smarter. Remember, the key to success is finding attainable ways to maximise productivity. Don't let deadlines and disorganisation hold you back. Work smarter and get more done!
Introducing a Unified Solution for Legal Document Management
You need the right tools to minimise the document admin you’re not aware you’re doing. Then you can get on with your actual work, your deep work, (not the preparation). Part Four
Throughout this series, we've discussed the nature of legal work, analysed the pros and cons of traditional paper bundling, and brought attention to the inadequacies of current legal document workflow management. Now, it’s time to shed light on a solution that seeks to remedy the complexities and inefficiencies inherent in legal documentation processes.
At the heart of the problem is the fact that legal workflow management tools are designed with a skewed focus, often prioritizing document production over usage. This results in a tool that is ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst, failing to simplify the processes it is supposed to support. Lawyers need a tool that enables them to manage, read, annotate, and engage with documents, rather than simply produce them.
Experts like Harvard Business Review and Forbes have stressed the importance of developing digital workflows that effectively streamline processes and encourage productivity. In the legal realm, this means developing a tool that isn't just about creating documents, but about enhancing a lawyer's interaction with them.
Moreover, current practices also involve bundling as a separate process – an unnecessary and time-consuming step that should be integrated into the workflow. After all, it's not just about producing the bundle; it's about working with it from the moment the first document enters the workflow to the moment the bundle is printed out.
The legal world has long cried out for a solution that encapsulates the entire document lifecycle, from creation to printing, with everything in between. A tool that streamlines and simplifies, without compromising on functionality or accessibility.
The solution to these issues is not far-fetched. Imagine a world where legal professionals can easily navigate and annotate their documents, manage their workflows more effectively, and have a seamless bundling process all within a single tool. It’s no longer a vision for the future, but a present reality.
Several thought leaders like Above the Law have recognized the need for legal technology that embraces this holistic approach, arguing that the future of legal work lies in digital tools that unify these processes.
Unveiling the Solution: Casedo
Enter Casedo. Casedo is a tool that is designed with the lawyer's workflow in mind. It is built to address the unique challenges of document management in the legal world, allowing users to read, annotate, and manage their documents all in one place.
Casedo does away with the concept of bundling as a separate process, integrating it as a part of the overall workflow. As such, you can work with your documents and bundles from the moment you receive the first document until the time comes to print the final product. This represents a revolutionary shift in the way we think about and interact with legal documents, eliminating unnecessary steps and making legal work more efficient and manageable.
Moreover, Casedo is designed specifically for reading and annotating documents. It is not just a tool for producing documents, but a tool for truly interacting with them, offering functionalities that empower lawyers to work with their documents in a more intuitive and effective manner.
In essence, Casedo is a unified solution that allows legal professionals to focus on what truly matters: delivering top-notch legal services. By simplifying the process of managing, reading, and annotating documents, and seamlessly integrating bundling into the workflow, Casedo facilitates the transition to a more efficient and effective legal practice.
Conclusion
It's clear that a shift in the way we manage legal documents is needed. The legal profession requires a tool that empowers them to effectively use and manage their documents, rather than just create them. Moreover, the process of bundling should be seamlessly integrated into the workflow, rather than treated as a separate task.
That solution is Casedo. Designed specifically for reading and annotating documents, Casedo does away with bundling as a separate process, wrapping all these necessities within a single tool. It's a streamlined solution from the moment the first document enters the workflow to when the bundle is printed out.
Current legal document workflow management isn’t working
You need the right tools to minimise the document admin you’re not aware you’re doing. Then you can get on with your actual work, your deep work, (not the preparation). Part Three
In this series I’ve been trying to break down legal document workflows. I want to show how legal professionals could minimise their document admin time by choosing the right tools. By doing so, they can improve their workflow management, cut occupational stress and improve productivity.
In the first article in the series, I attempted to get to the heart of the actual work that legal professionals do, rather than the top line answer of “I’m a lawyer”, because only in knowing that could you successfully choose the tools you need.
In the second part of the series it may have looked as if I’d headed off at a tangent by concentrating on paper bundles. However, my premise was that we have a tendency to assume legacy ways of working are no longer fit for purpose. That we have nothing to learn from them. I wanted to show that the paper bundle has for a long time (centuries?) been an excellent tool for a variety of reasons. It continues to be particularly good for focused work, even with the admitted downsides of physical production, replication and archive. My argument being that ‘digital’ bundles, such as they are, tend to have solved the downsides of paper bundles without managing to adequately bring on board the upsides of paper bundles in terms of efficiency and productivity. At the end of the last article, I touched on how you might now be interacting with your papers. In this third part of the series I elaborate on this theme.
Why your current document workflow isn’t working
We can’t improve our productivity if we’re not aware that the way we work is inefficient. The extra steps you take to get your work done are not just administrative but are a workflow management and time management issue. Let’s take the paper bundle as the base case for document working, and step to digital from there.
Paper bundles: the good, the bad and the ugly
In the last part of this series, we touched on the good side of working with paper bundles
- the ability to focus, to work through documents by utilising non-linear reading (jumping tab to tab)
- to pick up where you left off
- to have a ready archive at the end of the process.
The downsides are obvious and common to many legacy physical tools and workflows, be they collaboration tools (of which paper bundles are one), or not. Paper bundles are
- time consuming to create
- time consuming to append
- extremely time consuming to replicate
- high risk in terms of loss / damage
The above negative aspects of bundles above have ‘digitise my workflow’ written all over them. And these processes have, by and large, beet successfully digitised.
What’s wrong with current legal document workflow management
1. Case & document workflow management systems are great for managing documents not using them
Document management is hugely important to any business, particularly in law where client data is the bread and butter of the business. But in terms of understanding and digesting the information at hand, ‘document management’ is unhelpful. Legal professionals shouldn’t be ‘managing’ documents, that is for support staff etc. to deal with. Legal professionals need to be using documents as part of their work. The current issue is that ‘document management’, by which I mean identification, storage, risk management etc, has dominated over the ability to use documents. For the sake of identification and good record management, documents are stored securely and individually. The focus is to not lose documents, in other words to manage documents, and to be able to identify them easily so they can be found and retrieved quickly and then used. This is great for a database of records (whatever those records are). However, it is very poor workflow when it comes to using those documents. You get a better sense of how inefficient this is for using the documents for work by looking at the hard copy analogy. If we imagine that in a paper-bundle, instead of putting all the relevant documents into a single paper bundle, you bundled each document individually. Not only that, but also bound them, titled them and tagged them individually. Follow that you kept them on a shelf so that any time you wanted to look at the document you had to get up from your desk to go and fetch it. If you needed to digest 58 documents relating to a case, you’d have to get 58 different documents off the shelf (and put them back at the end of the day). This cumbersome workflow doesn’t even look at the question of how you would signpost between documents?
2. PDF Readers and Editors are great for producing documents, not reading them
For PDFs we look to PDF Readers and Editors. If you are faced with emails, PDFs and Word documents then you need to Alt + Tab (switch) back and forth between them, and even if you had all your documents in PDF format, how are you going to open those 58 documents (in the example above)? In 58 tabs across the top of your screen? How are you going to link between them, let alone read them. Non-linear reading becomes an exercise in will power with workflow like this! What if you are technically proficient enough to create a single bookmarked PDF of all the documents you need? That’s great, a bit like producing a professionally bound hard copy document. But what happens if, as is bound to happen, you need to add a document at the last minute, recreating that magnificent monolithic document is a long and tedious process. None of this is an issue with a paper bundle, except maybe the cumbersome addition of new documents.
3. Creating a bundle is a separate process
And then given how you work with documents, how do you create an electronic (or even paper) bundle if you need to go to arbitration or to court? You need to create a ‘bundle’ from scratch. Back in the paper days you would already have a bundle to hand, you had begun to make it from day one of the case. It built up over time, and then, when it needed to be shared with the other side or the court, you had to make a clean copy, but at the very least you had a copy to clone. But now, none of this. Not only does one spend a huge amount of time opening up individual files, and having to search across them individually. Making links between them is tiresome, and making a bundle another chore in itself. It’s as if all the benefits of the paper bundle have been taken away just to save time and money in the creation of a paper bundle. One set of inefficiencies have been replaced with another.
The Solution
This is the current situation, and many are yet to notice that this is even a problem. It so ingrained is it into our workflows and workflow management systems. However, it doesn’t need to be, as I will show in the final part of this series.
What’s stopping you from being a better lawyer?
In the lawyer’s ideal world, monthly billing and work-in-progress targets are always on track, deadlines are never missed, while senior partners and clients alike are singing your praises. And to top it all off, you even have time to enjoy life outside of the office. What's stopping you from being a better lawyer?
But as we all know, life at the legal coalface can feel very different. Competing priorities, a frantic workplace culture, that nagging feeling of getting nowhere fast with your caseload: too often, these can all combine to stop you working as effectively as you would like. So what exactly is stopping you reaching your full potential and being the better lawyer you know you can be? To help you change your working practices for the better, here are some of the key areas legal professionals should focus on.
Wellbeing: dealing with work stress
The ideal legal workplace should be a place where you thrive — not merely survive. But despite the initiatives over recent years to tackle issues surrounding wellbeing across the legal profession, it remains a problem for many. One recent poll of UK workers suggested that lawyers are the second most stressed professionals in the country. (1)
Impossible targets, an ever-expanding caseload, insufficient support from management, unrealistic client demands, a culture of long hours and internal competitiveness: these are some of the most common causes of work stress for lawyers.
If any of these sound familiar, the most important thing to remember is that you are not alone. And of course, tackling the causes of stress early can prevent them from getting out of control. Organisations such as Lawcare and Wellbeing at the Bar are also very useful sources of information and support.
Collaboration
“This is my client. These are my files.”
Collaboration, historically, has been resisted in the legal profession. Because of the nature of caseload management and client relationships, it’s almost inevitable that you will develop a strong sense of ownership over your work. But sometimes, this sense of ownership can go too far: especially when lawyers mistakenly believe that seeking additional input is a sign of weakness. Being a better lawyer does not mean not working with others.
A strong work culture encourages collaboration; something that’s as true of the legal profession as anywhere else. When a crisis arises, this attitude encourages everyone to pitch in to help resolve it as effectively and efficiently as possible. More generally, a fresh perspective can sometimes be what’s needed to move a case along. One of your colleagues down the corridor might just have the precedent you are missing — or the name of exactly the right expert witness your case needs.
There are a number of ways to enable collaboration within a firm or chambers. It could be as simple as actively encouraging an open door policy. Alternatively, you might want to introduce a more structured mechanism for collaboration. For instance, round-table meetings once or twice a week, where fee earners are encouraged to talk through their problem cases and share ideas, or introducing collaboration software so that working together on cases is made simpler. This group-focused approach can enable you to resolve problems more efficiently, thereby boosting productivity.
Time management
You have a particularly tricky statement to draft. To get it right, you fully intend to devote a big chunk of your afternoon to the task. But then things start to go slightly awry: the attachments you need are scattered across various folders — so everything looks set to take longer than you anticipated. Next comes a flurry of urgent-sounding notifications in the corner of your screen that you feel the need to read and respond to. Finally, a longstanding client scheduled to see you tomorrow morning telephones. They want to see whether you could possibly fit them in later today instead.
We all have days when what you actually achieve looks very different to what you expected. If it happens frequently, this absence of adequate time management can seriously impair your productivity.
Breaking off from one matter to another, and then going back again, can be incredibly inefficient. This is especially true where the tasks involved are relatively complex and require a certain amount of recapping each time you open the file. In fact, research indicates that it takes an average of 23 minutes to resume work after being interrupted by an unrelated task.(2) It can also so easily increase the scope for procrastination. After all, with a busy caseload, there is always something to conveniently divert you from a difficult or unpleasant task — but only if you allow it to.
Effective time management demands prioritisation, along with setting realistic estimates for how long individual tasks will take. Set yourself a daily task list; one that allows a certain leeway for unforeseen events – and make sure you stick to it. Always remember: to retain control of your caseload, the starting point involves gaining control of your diary.
Read more: 7 productivity tips for lawyers to improve efficiency
Automation and technology: resistance to change
Thanks to developments such as digital case management and e-filing, the legal profession has gone some way in shedding its traditional, rather anti-tech image. That said, firms and individual lawyers can still harbour resistance to change, potentially stopping them from reaching their full potential. Not least because, when dealing with sensitive information, some technology could leave you at risk of a cyber-attack.
But what practical bottlenecks are you still struggling with? Could technology offer you a way to solve them? As one notable example, it’s so easy to waste time on searching for and sifting through scattered documents, instead of actually reviewing them. A digitisation solution could be just what’s needed to free up your time for more valuable (and billable) tasks, that will lead to you being a better lawyer.
For further advice on the risks currently encountered in the legal sector, along with hints and tips on improving your business processes, be sure to explore our Insights Hub.
References
- Walters, M. (2019). Lawyers are second most stressed professionals, research claims. [online] Law Gazette. Available at: https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/law/lawyers-are-second-most-stressed-professionals-research-claims/5069915.article
- Pattison, K. (2008). Worker, Interrupted: The Cost of Task Switching. [online] Fast Company. Available at: https://www.fastcompany.com/944128/worker-interrupted-cost-task-switching
UPDATED: 2022.11.08
How Legal Firms Can Break Remote Working Barriers
With reference to the Doug Hargrove article How Legal Firms Can Break Remote Working Barriers, Gizem Akilli offers her views on WFH.
Technology: Historic resistance to recent reliance, but remote working barriers remain
The legal sector, owing to its historic resistance to technology and the immediate effects of the global crisis, has experienced severe disruption. Casedo inventor and practicing barrister, Ross Birkbeck, found it easier than most to work from home in a rapidly accelerating industry, still responding to the pandemic. Given his background, Ross has helped steer the ship during a turbulent time. It is these remote working barriers that are hindering progress in the legal sector.
The recent reliance on innovative tools has enabled lawyers to operate remotely. Those who have used digital solutions before, have undoubtedly boasted better adaptation to the new normal. As a case management tool, Casedo gives users the ability to work paperlessly.
The constructive feedback from hundreds of legal professionals, has in no small part, enabled hundreds of barristers feel better equipped to deal with remote practice. The software was initially developed as a user-friendly case management tool, by a barrister for barristers. Two years later, is now being utilised by the UCL Law Society. For UCL Law Society, Casedo is its sole platform for the junior and senior mooting competitions
Security issues need to be recognised
We have also recognised the issues with cybersecurity, both as a difficulty of cloud storage and a barrier to wider tech acceptance in the legal sector. That is why Casedo we designed to operate outside the cloud, with users storing their files locally. Users are able to take complete control over their data, and share casefiles using any external tools they wish. Moreover, the silver linings behind the pandemic are unavoidable.
Prior to 2020, the choice between paperless and paper files was balanced. Going forward, it seems that this approach has forever changed, and there is no looking back. The HMCTS, law firms and various organisations are already implementing expectations around paperless workflows, and this will surely continue in a post pandemic world. Law firms in the UK have already established regulations to prevent reliance on paper. This reformed approach will likely resonate with competitors, and before long, managing a paperless workflow will be the standard procedure for legal professionals.
Final Thoughts
Doug Hargrove has really hit the nail on the head with his analysis on remote working in a post pandemic world. The changes brought about have been sudden, but have momentously changed our understanding of existing solutions to long overlooked problems.
Why not read our ‘Working from home 2.0’ article on Legal Futures? Click HERE to read the full text.
UPDATE: 2022.11.08
Is working with paper bundles all bad?
You need the right tools to minimise the document admin you’re not aware you’re doing. Then you can get on with your actual work, your deep work, (not the preparation). Part Two
In the first part of this series I looked at making sure you knew the kind of work you did, so that you could make sure that you chose the proper tools for the job, rather than just using what other’s did, just defaulting to something, as people do, for example, with using email as their primary workflow whether it be for their legal deep work or not.
Throughout this article I’m going to use the term bundle (in capitals) to refer to the legal stack of papers that lawyers work with on a particular matter or case. Traditionally this would have been a paper bundle. Bundle is a UK term, in North America the term used is ‘Brief’. And of course you can exchange Lawyer for the word Attorney.
In the first article I alluded to the idea that, though we’ve been trying to replace them seemingly forever, paper bundles are not so bad after all. This is what I want to look in this piece.
Is working with paper bundles all bad?
Traditionally you’d do your brain work by printing all the relevant documents and putting them in a paper bundle. Then you'd tab it up with a table of contents to create an effective way to navigate the documents. On creating the bundle you then added documents to the bundle as they arrived, working through the bundle making annotations and comments as necessary. During periods when the case wasn’t moving forward you’d file it somewhere, but crucially, because of the way you put the bundle together, you could easily pick up where you left off, whenever you needed to. You could add documents at will as you went along (though unbinding some of these files could be tedious). Once the case was closed or otherwise dealt with, you had a ready-made archive which could be stored appropriately.
It seems, in some ways, to be a rather quaint way of working, nostalgic, almost, and many would decry its inefficiencies, but I would ask two questions:
1. How did you actually interact with the documents when they were in paper form?
There are many ways you’d have worked through the bundle, depending on how you chose to work. However, I can guarantee (almost) that you didn’t start at page one and work through the bundle in a linear fashion (this would have been particularly true once you were up and running with the bundle, once you were adding pages after the initial ‘building’). No, you made links and connections between different parts of the bundle. Letters and other documents were added at different periods during the course of the case. In other words, you read the bundle in a non-linear way. You followed the trail of the sense of the matter, not the page numbers.
2. How do you interact with your papers now?
If you are still stubbornly printing your papers to make a paper bundle as above, then good for you. However, this is a poor choice in terms of time and cost (and I guess you are getting it in the neck on costs, time and the sheer urgh of whoever is putting the bundle together for you, if someone is).
If, as is more likely, you’ve got a digital filing or case management system, your way of interacting with the documents couldn’t be further from the workflow you did with paper, not that many years ago. And this is where the problem lies, and the inefficiencies creep in.
Digital things are meant to be improvements on analogue. We know this to be the idea, but we also know that the reality can be very different. And different in this case, it very much is.
Paper bundles are cumbersome, heavy, massively time-consuming to produce, and not-backed up (not to mention environmentally suspect). Digital solves all of these issues.
However, as previously stated, paper bundles are flexible, easy to understand, excellent for focus, marking up and ultimately archiving. Apart from perhaps the latter, digital to date has not managed to match any of these things. Digital solutions have solved the admin problems of paper bundles, but by doing so have also removed all the benefits that bundles have.
So what is it about these supposedly great digital workflows that is causing such trouble? In the third part of this article, I take a look.
What kind of work do you do?
You need the right tools to minimise the document admin you’re not aware you’re doing, and get on with your actual work, your deep legal work (not the preparation). Part One
In this series I’m going to look at why you need the right tools for the legal work you do and why these tools are just as important as being an efficient and effective legal practitioner. In fact, the wrong tools are a barrier to effectiveness. I’ll show how, for all its flaws, the traditional paper bundle remains a flexible tool attuned to case workflows, whilst digital replacements to working with paper bundles remain not fit-for-purpose. I’ll continue by explaining why your current workflow isn’t working, and in the final part will tell you what you need, why, and where to get it.
Throughout this article I’m going to use the term Matter (in capitals) to refer to the legal issues you're working on. Matter, is this way also includes ‘Case’ and ‘Brief’.
In this first part of the article I’ll touch on
- why it’s important to know what kind of work it is that you do before choosing the tools
- the need for having the right tools for the right job
What kind of work do you do?
On the face of it, this is an easy answer, in terms of your job description perhaps, or how you feel about yourself and what you do professionally. But in order to be able to choose the right tools, rather than just falling into ‘choices’ as many of use do (for example there are easily more than 30 direct competitors to Adobe Acrobat Reader, many excellent, yet most of us stick with Acrobat, or whatever our computer came with when we bought it), you need to take a step back and ask yourself, what is it that my clients are paying me for?
PDF Editors are not all things to all people
So, you’re a legal practitioner, what kind of work do you do? At Casedo some legal professionals we speak to tell us “I use a PDF editor.” That suggests that the work they do is just reading / editing documents, and on the face of it this might seem the case. But it isn’t.
Besides the fact that PDFs were originally created to share consistently formatted documents without the need for editing, and that editing PDFs is clunky and time-consuming compared to say using Word, ‘just reading’ PDFs suggests an experience akin to reading a research paper or an essay, ie. in a linear, perhaps chronological, way.
As a lawyer, this is not what you do. You have a Matter before you, comprising of dozens of different documents of many types, you need to need to read and understand, make links, pick out common threads, and so digest the documents. In other words you need to make sense of all the documents related to the Matter, and thus reach professional legal conclusions based on this. It is not a linear reading process, it is non-linear. What you do is make sense of a Matter, how you do it is through non-linear reading of the documents related to that Matter.
Having the right tools for the job in hand is vital
If you’ve got to do some blue-sky thinking for your business, retirement, that novel you’ve been cogitating on for years, you need a pen and paper. There are no external inputs needed for blue-sky thoughts, the opposite, in fact.
But what about your legal work? There are external inputs; client emails, law, and other miscellaneous documents. They often arrive in a hotchpotch of ways, perhaps email or shared storage, and even then they come in different file types that need opening by different applications.
I've got this - But have you really?
You’ve already dealt with this, right? You’ve got a great way of filing your case-related documents, in a case management system or in, for simplicities sake, File Explorer. Add to that a PDF reader for reading documents and Word for editing / creating new documents. You’re satisfied that it works for you, even if it’s not perfect, what else is there to say?
Well, a case management system is for managing documents, not specifically for reading and understanding them. You open and then complete few matters on the same day, meaning that every time you are looking to work on this Matter as it progresses over the following weeks or months, you’re going to have to open each and every file individually. In a paper bundle you’d have everything in one place, in a digital case management workflow you might have hundreds of documents to open individually. Evidently, this is not the right tool for the right job. To stick to the paper analogy, imagine, instead of a single paper bundle each separate document related to that matter was bound and filed separately, that would not be fit-for-purpose.
Paper bundles evolved over many years, they are an excellent benchmark for a fit-for-purpose legal tool. In the next part of the article I’m going to look at paper bundles in more detail, explaining why they’ve been such a difficult tool to replace digitally.
Casedo Solves Common Problems with Legal Workflows
In short: Casedo makes it easy to navigate dozens of PDFs and master both your case file and your legal research.
Casedo was built by lawyers for lawyers. And it was built because no other software company seemed to understand how lawyers work with multiple documents. In this series, we’ll look at common workflow problems with legal workflows that lawyers, judges, law professors, and law students face when working on cases and legal research—and we’ll explore how Casedo solves these problems.
Common Problems with Legal Workflows that Casedo Solves:
- “The Mess of Tabs and Windows”
- “The Siloed Approach to File Organization and Annotation”
- “The Hassles of Assembling and Paginating a PDF for E-Filing”
Common Legal Workflow Problem #1: “The Mess of Tabs and Windows.”
“I need to master the case file, which contains dozens of PDFs and Word Documents. Because I move among documents, my digital desktop is a mess of windows and tabs in Adobe Acrobat and Word. It’s a bit chaotic. Moreover, trying to find the document I want is interrupting my thought processes.”
How Casedo Solves “The Mess of Tabs and Windows.”
Casedo is a tab-free digital workspace that puts all your case files within one click, freeing lawyers from cascading windows and the minimize/maximize dance. With multiple viewing areas in Casedo, you can rapidly toggle from document to document. Moreover, rather than have one case folder with dozens of PDFs and Word Docs, you’ll have one Casedo file—a tidy place to work through the record and master even the most complex of case files.

Solving “The Mess of Tabs and Windows” was a big reason we created Casedo, because we needed a better way to navigate to key documents, both in the courtroom and in the office. And we’re pleased to hear from users that Casedo is solving this workflow problem:
“Casedo provides the benefits of a paper bundle—particularly being able to quickly hold pages up against each other, highlight bits of text, and ‘stick a post-it in’—with all the benefits of search and speed that digital files have.”
Tom Haggie, Barrister, QEB
“I found Casedo really easy to use. It is intuitive, not cluttered with various menus and options and you could really get going with it in a matter of minutes.”
Peter Goff, Litigant in Person
Common Legal Workflow Problem #2: “The Siloed Approach to File Organization and Annotation.”
“I use a digital folder system and I put the entire case file in one place. The trouble is, I must open the dozens of documents one by one. And I have no way of building relationships between those documents. Ultimately, although the documents are foldered together, it’s difficult to interact with those documents at the same time.”
How Casedo Solves “The Siloed Approach to File Organization and Annotation.”
For legal professionals, a case-by-case foldering system isn’t enough—lawyers need a way to map out how files relate to one another, keeping track of those connections when working through the record. To support a lawyer’s thinking process, Casedo lets you drag-and-drop all the case files into a single Casedo file. Once those documents are in that Casedo file, all you need to do is open the file to have ready access to every important document. From there, you have powerful tools to reach across documents:
- Casedo lets you build links between files, so you can easily navigate between them. You can create your own pathways through the case file, making it easy to jump to related information. Gone are the days of writing out key page numbers by hand. With Casedo, you can make links and jump right to the important page.
- Casedo gives you one search bar to search the entire case file, saving you time. Other software doesn’t understand that case files are related, forcing you to open documents one by one to search for a key phrase or passage. Casedo gives you a better way to work, offering a single search bar to search the dozens of documents you’ve placed inside your Casedo file.
- Casedo makes it easy to annotate your files with highlights, bookmarks, and comments. With a full suite of annotation tools, Casedo supports lawyers through the entire lifecycle of a case—from the initial mastery of the record to the final stages of developing arguments into strong written or oral advocacy.
We’re proud to hear from Casedo users about how easy it is to build relationships between ideas and annotate cases in Casedo:
“It enables you to link, view and annotate multiple sources and save, share and archive your work as a single project. Intuitive and easy to use, I have not seen anything else like it—as such it is truly revolutionary.”
Tom Longden, Director of Marketing & Communications, City University.
“Casedo provides the benefits of a paper bundle—particularly being able to quickly hold pages up against each other, highlight bits of text, and ‘stick a post-it in’—with all the benefits of search and speed that digital files have.”
Tom Haggie, Barrister, QEB
Common Legal Workflow Problem #3: “The Hassles of Assembling and Paginating a PDF for E-Filing”
“I need to assemble multiple PDFs and Word Docs into a single PDF—one that looks good and is properly paginated so I can e-file it with the court. However, this takes forever and I’ve resorted to writing page numbers on the PDF I put together because it’s simply faster than using the software tools currently available to me.”
How Casedo Solves “The Hassles of Assembling and Paginating a PDF for E-Filing”
PDFs themselves are a problem, and there is more than just a single type of PDF, but you have to work with them! A lawyer’s time is valuable, better spent analyzing cases rather than dealing with fussy software or writing numbers on pages. It should take thirty seconds—not thirty minutes—to organize documents into a single PDF, stamp them with page numbers, and export a PDF that’s ready for e-filing. Casedo is a time-saving software solution that’s built for the job, making it easy for you to build an Appendix, Exhibit Volumes, and other bundles of documents you’d like to tender to the court in a single e-filing.
- Casedo makes it easy to assemble a PDF with an intuitive drag-and-drop system. Just load all the PDFs and Word Docs into Casedo. Once you’ve loaded the files, you can easily reorganize them by intuitive dragging-and-dropping.
- Casedo lets you paginate with just one click. There’s a slider at the bottom of Casedo that offers up one-click pagination. Change your mind and want to reorder the documents? Go ahead and reorder them. Casedo will automatically update the page numbers to match the new location.
- Casedo makes it easy export your PDF. Once you're satisfied with your new document, Casedo makes it easy to export the PDF—immediately ready for e-filing.
Easy PDF assembly and export for e-filing is one of the most popular features in Casedo:
“Casedo is an extremely efficient and intuitive e-bundling tool, particularly useful for courtroom advocates. It’s leagues ahead of its Adobe counterparts, and likely to significantly reduce case preparation time. Casedo is fantastic software.”
Joe Rainer, Barrister, QEB
Bringing it All Together
These are just a few of the common problems with legal workflows that Casedo solves for the modern legal professional. If you haven’t tried Casedo yet, we encourage you to give Casedo a test drive for free during a fully featured thirty-day trial. You’ll find Casedo especially helpful if:
- You've felt frustrated when using tabs to navigate legal documents.
- You wish you had a single search bar to search dozens of case documents.
- You'd like to share a complete case file without attaching scattered PDFs.
- You want to make one PDF—complete with a table of contents—out of many.
Ready to give Casedo a go? We offer a completely free 30-day trial, so you can see how Casedo will transform your work. Sign up here today.
Delivering Digital Courts is the only solution to the Backlog
Milad Shojaei investigates the digitisation of the Criminal and Civil Justice systems. Working in the Criminal Justice System, Milad has dealt with the backlog first-hand, leveraging the benefits of technology to break down the barriers that hold the legal system back.
The legal system of England and Wales has inspired the world for the past 1000 years, influencing various countries all across the globe. However, consumers of legal services cannot overlook the persisting problem of the court backlog, which has overwhelmed the justice system at the expense of public confidence and effective enforcement of the law.
The Criminal Justice System in England and Wales (CJS) manages over 2 million cases every year, and in September 2016, Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) embarked on a digital reform programme that would assist dealing with the significant caseload across all jurisdictions. However, the COVID-19 outbreak exacerbated the existing backlog, intensifying an already concerning problem. Meanwhile, the picture is no better in Civil Justice. Statistics from the Ministry of Justice released every quarter show a Backlog that is steadily growing. To effectively reinvigorate our reputation as justice leaders, we must oversee radical systemic changes that enhance the court capacity through what we still quaintly refer to as "modern" IT and sustainable digitisation initiatives.
Has the Justice system reached a ‘tipping point’ due to the backlog?
Service data disclosed by HMCTS indicated that by the end of September 2020 there were 509,347 outstanding cases in the magistrate's courts and 48,713 in the Crown court. The CJS saw a 44% increase in the number of outstanding cases compared to 2019, according to the official Ministry of Justice (MOJ) statistics for courts in England and Wales.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) managed almost 171,000 cases in June, with the number of ongoing prosecutions rising by one-third. The global crisis, coupled with over a decade of austerity measures imposed by the government, has aggravated the waiting list of cases in the crown court as the backlog is anticipated to reach 50,000 before the end of the year. The number of outstanding criminal cases at the magistrate's court reached record levels during the peak of the pandemic, with a 94% drop of effective cases following the closure of the courts.
The latest figures also illustrate that the employment tribunals were receiving 1,250 new claims, with a total backlog of more than 45,000 overdue cases as of late September. These alarming figures are subject to inflation in light of the anticipated rise of unfair dismissal/discrimination claims made as more people lose their jobs.
Whilst in the civil courts the picture is as grim. In the period Q1-Q3 inclusive for 2020 there have been just over 600,000 fewer cases commenced than in the equivalent period in 2019. A proportion of the 600,000 cases will not be started because one or other, or both, parties will be insolvent. Nevertheless we foresee up to 400,000 cases being commenced in addition to business as usual volumes which is a very large Tsunami of Litigation coming.
In addition the first evidence of COVID related claims is coming to light with the recent publication from the Compensation Recovery Unit of increasing numbers of claims said to be due to COVID; in particular claims arising from Employer’s Liability insurance policies. This together with anecdotal evidence of significant claims farming activity in this growth area suggest that 400,000 additional claims in the next 2 quarters may only be the tip of the iceberg. An empirical consideration of the factors bringing about the civil justice Tsunami was set out in the DisputesEfiling Limited’s (DEF) White Paper published in July 2020.
The backlog of cases was increasing years before the emergence of COVID-19 due to the lack of funding in the justice system. For legal professionals across the sector, the problem has only intensified in light of recent events. Despite the introduction of remote court hearings and new digital workflows, the backlog has seen a rise in the previous months. The question arises, are we doing enough?
Regrettably, the result of the Spending Review of Autumn 2020 is that there was no new money for the Modernisation programme, with the original £1.4bn having run out in December 2019. HM Treasury indicated it would “consider” whether to grant more funds in February 2021. Leaving a less than half finished digitisation programme which only serves to further exacerbate the Backlog.
Amanda Pinto QC, chair of the Bar Council
The impact of the court backlog
Analysts from crime and justice consultancy Crest Advisory have predicted that the backlog in the criminal courts can rise to 200,000 by 2024 unless radical reforms are administered vigorously. A fundamental risk of the backlog is the impact it can have on vulnerable parties to proceedings. Claire Waxman, the Independent Victims Commissioner for London, warns that the current circumstances will compel victims of sexual offences and violent crimes to endure years of delay before they can receive justice. This tragic reality threatens the integrity of the UK justice system and increases the chances of victims abandoning the process entirely.
Defendants in court proceedings are also amongst those paying a heavy price. Due to unavailable court hearings, and a limited capacity to deal with a growing list of matters, the government introduced legislation enabling defendants awaiting trial to be held for 238 days. This effectively replaced the previous 182-day limit and has arguably compelled many defendants to render guilty pleas to avoid having delayed court proceedings hanging over their heads for years to come. Delaying justice is inevitably the denial of justice, and the integrity of the UK judicial system hangs in the balance unless robust solutions are pressed at speed.
In civil justice, the interventions that have taken place have been rolled out commendably by HMCTS in the face of the Pandemic. However, they consist of more physical courts and a video conferencing solution called Kinly Cloud Video Platform or CVP. Neither will stem the Backlog, let alone overcome the Tsunami of Litigation. Increasing the number of physical courts can only deal with the cases in the system at present. CVP does not accelerate the pace of hearings; if anything, it slows the pace of trials. This is because remote hearings, as we have all learned now, are slower due to infrastructure issues such as interrupted connection or low bandwidth or latency issues or all three. Hence a trial is typically extended by a day to cope with this. Given the number of cases in the Backlog, let alone the Tsunami, it does not take a Mathematician to understand CVP is not the solution and is in fact, the problem in terms of Backlog elimination.
In civil jurisdictions what is needed is much more Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and much greater integration of ADR into civil court proceedings of England and Wales. Perhaps compulsory ADR before being allowed to start any claim, then between Defence and any time table being set for the case and finally, if not already settled, in the month before trial. This appears to be the direction of travel envisaged by Sir Geoffrey Vos who becomes the country’s third most notable Judge, the Master of the Rolls, on 11 January 2021.
Can we harness technology to bust the backlog?
The criminal courts have made considerable progress in digitising the justice system since moving away from paper-based systems in April 2016. The pivotal choice in offering court users an alternative to the traditional paper-based system has also effectively instigated a 4% rise in responsive prosecutions. Similarly, the family courts reported that paper-based forms resulted in higher chances of error. In comparison, digital applications ensured less than 1% errors.
Nevertheless, the CJS still relies on paper-based legal evidence and documentation. Digital evidence is more accessible than paper evidence, enabling legal professionals to review cases earlier and for court proceedings to operate more swiftly. What’s more, digital evidence ensures that documents are secured more safely, reducing the risk of losing or misplacing files. Professor Richard Susskind, IT Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, advances that the courts should integrate existing digital alternatives as it not only enables speedier resolutions but also because court users have a “growing expectation that services will be delivered digitally”. Lawyers that work paperlessly typically report exercising improved efficiency, better case management and the ability to streamline the case preparation process so that matters can be dealt with more quickly. A detailed report on the benefits of digital case management systems was published on the Casedo Insights Hub in May 2020.
Enforcing a more meaningful move away from paper-based systems would guarantee better accuracy and less room for mistakes during the court procedure. By minimising errors, adjournments would reduce significantly, and this could potentially tackle a vital aspect of the growing backlog while safeguarding the efficiency of the CJS.
More staff or more tech?
To address the backlog, the MoJ is planning to open more emergency Nightingale courts, and the idea of employing more staff has also been considered. But are these viable solutions to address the problem? Although hiring more staff can assist in easing the pressure of the backlog, it will not adequately redress the issue. Greater numbers of workers may reduce quality control, leading to re-work, which can effectively intensify the backlog. An overburdened workforce is incapable of moving with speed necessary to tackle the issue at hand. Equipping court staff and legal professionals with new technologies would potentially yield better results.
Unfortunately, this is unlikely to be the solution as the Financial Settlement of 2015 entered into between the MoJ and HM Treasury requires a reduction of 6,000 staff at MoJ (including HMCTS) by the end of the 20-21 financial period. That process began 2 or 3 years ago. The justification for this was, of course, the completion of the digitisation of the Courts, which has regrettably not happened.
The way forward as Professor Susskind has begun to realise and more recently advocate is a series of public and private partnerships to fill the gaps left by the unfinished Modernisation Programme. Thus, we envisage much more ADR within the heart of the civil justice system being managed online. The volumes of ADR envisaged are simply too great to manage otherwise. Further, the citizen will simply not understand (and therefore not embrace) ADR conducted on paper. People’s entire lives are now managed online and ADR must be equally digitised for it to succeed. The Civil Justice Council recognises this with its recent consultation about making ADR de facto compulsory at not one but several points in the life of a court claim.
Moreover, HMCTS is already experimenting with remote hearings and paperless operations, proving that experimentation is a process and not a one-time fix. In the magistrate's court, digital case management and greater use of IT is underway and delivering good results. It has effectively reduced the need for paperwork while simplifying and modernising procedures to create a system that works for all legal consumers. Continuing development behind such digitisation initiatives will likely improve efficiency in the allocation of cases and break down the barriers that delay the judicial system and increase the backlog.
During the first national Lockdown, the Business and Property Courts reported business as usual was maintained for up to 80% of its caseload. This is because those Courts have been digitised. Meanwhile in the County Courts, where most of the 2.1m cases issued in England and Wales take place every year, there is still no effective IT. Nevertheless the private sector can come together with HMCTS to provide solutions, just as was done when Thomson Reuters provided the e filing solution for the Rolls Building jurisdictions and, later, the BPC courts.
Nothing can stop the E-Justice revolution
Analysts at Crest Advisory suggest that the 2019 level of court utilisation must be doubled to bring the backlog under control. Given the state of our downed economy in light of the current economic crisis, we simply can’t afford to fulfil capacity expectations. We can, however, drive forward the digitisation of the court process and support integrating existing technologies to boost court capacity. It is equally crucial that a culture change within the profession accompanies modernisation initiatives as resistance will fundamentally curtail progress.
The projected negative attitudes of legal professionals that are unable to move forward with the times will hold us back. As such, lawyers across all jurisdictions should take more significant steps to adapt to rapidly changing times to avoid being left behind to keep their livelihoods in the Next Normal and keep cases moving at a reasonable pace. As the legal sector emerges from the global crisis, it’s clear that what sets different courts apart in their capability to manage the backlog, is their level of digitisation. Today’s revolution in technology will undeniably represent the standard of tomorrow’s justice system.
While you’re here why not read our Legal Futures article on 'Has the shift to remote working increased cybersecurity threats'? Click HERE for the full text.