OK, this is a tip for the people who do the REAL WORK in the law office– the secretaries and paralegals who toil in the background to make sure our cases keep moving forward– the unsung heroes in every law firm.

One of the things that drives everyone nuts is trying to schedule depositions in multi-party cases. Trying to coordinate the schedules of 3,4, 8 or 10 different trial lawyers to find a mutually convenient date is nearly impossible. In the old days, this task involved many, many phone calls and follow-up phone calls.

Thankfully, there is now a MUCH better way to schedule meetings than the “old way” that involved picking up the phone. It’s a website that makes scheduling EASY. My paralegal just came to my door with a huge smile on her face after using this website for the first time– her exact words: “It is SO easy and SO fast. It saved me TONS of time.” You don’t get a better endorsement than that from a very busy paralegal.

Below is the tip I received last month form Susan Liebel’s excellent blog, Build A Solo Practice, that turned my on to this great website. Read below for the details.

Hope this tip helps legal secretaries and paralegals everywhere! By the way, it is also useful for ANYONE who has to coordinate the scheduling of a date for many people.

Thanks for reading,
Jim Reed
New York & Pennsylvania Accident & Malpractice Lawyer
jreed@zifflaw.com

“Tip of the Week” – Scheduling Through ‘When is Good’

via Build A Solo Practice, LLC by Susan Cartier Liebel, Esq. on 10/5/08
H/T to Allison Shields of LegalEase for turning me on to this nifty and FREE time-management tool that helps to eliminate phone and e-mail tag when trying to schedule a meeting. It’s called “When Is Good.”
Here’s how it works:
When you go to the site, you’ll be provided with a grid containing dates and times. You can customize the grid, change time zones, etc. Then you’ll click on the dates and times that you’re available. You’ll receive a link that you can email to all of the potential meeting participants, as well as a results code to view the results.
Meeting participants will click on the link in the email you’ve sent them. The link will take them to a page with all of the available meeting dates and times and instruct them to click on all of the dates/times when they are also available.
You can then visit the results page and see when everyone is free.
You also have an option to create an account that will save all of your events in one place.
This cool and FREE little tool can save a lot of time devoted to the complicated task of coordination which, as Allison points out, can eat up more time then the actual meeting. I will just have to start using this with my clients. Thanks, Allison!