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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: Hey everyone, Scott Benton here. How are you? I am the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast where we help you easily transition from a law school student into your professional career as an attorney and where we make the practice of law fun. And today we’re going to talk about what happens when you develop long face and what the surefire antidote is for that extremely irritating law firm long face condition.
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[00:01:20] Scott Benton: Okay, so what’s long face you’re asking? Long face is that far away, blank, exhausted expression or that thousand yard stare that you tend to get when work becomes completely overbearing from the sheer amount of work that you’ve got piled up in front of you on your plate that you can’t possibly get through.
[00:01:39] Scott Benton: Or when tasks become unmanageable and they start falling through the cracks. This condition can often develop as a by product of having little or no control over your workday or your life, and where you’re pulled in a thousand different directions. And by the end of the day, you feel like you got absolutely nothing done, even though you were busy [00:02:00] every second of that day.
[00:02:02] Scott Benton: Longface then shows up the next morning when you get into the office early to optimistically try and get ahead, but you end up fighting off ten raging forest fires the minute you turn on your computer, and then suddenly it’s 3. 30pm and you never broke for lunch.
[00:02:18] Scott Benton: This seems to happen to you frequently. Long face is a condition you want to avoid at all costs because it only leads to a life of continuous pain and drudgery where all sense of joy and any trace of enjoyment in the world are quickly stripped away and your work and your personal life become tedious and tiresome and even lifeless and dull.
[00:02:38] Scott Benton: Fortunately, with our success cycle model that we talk a lot about on this podcast, we have a surefire antidote to this dreaded law firm condition that quickly removes any open signs of misery and any display of disharmony with your firm or with your job and with your casework.
[00:02:55] Scott Benton: And it’s going to re energize your ability to organize your to do list, to complete your [00:03:00] most pressing legal services, to bill for your time, And not only reach and exceed your billable hourly requirement, but you’re going to do it with enjoyment again. And even with a great deal of alacrity. That means enthusiasm.
[00:03:14] Scott Benton: Now, in the grand scheme of your work life, it probably means your practice of law is not properly utilizing the success cycle. And that means that your to do list is a mess. You really don’t have any clear goals or objectives for, or priorities for your legal services that you’re performing every day.
[00:03:32] Scott Benton: You’ve got so many tasks backed up that you’re just trying to keep your head above water. And it probably means your billing entries, which is what you do once you’ve completed a legal service, are not clearly written. And clients are starting to wonder what they’re even paying you for. And they want explanations of the legal work, because legal work ain’t getting any cheaper.
[00:03:54] Scott Benton: So to find a surefire antidote for this law firm long face that you need to abandon as soon as [00:04:00] possible if you’ve got it. If you’ve got it, you’ve got to get rid of it. We need to go back a step before the success cycle that informs your entire workflow. And if this step isn’t working properly, then all of your case work is going to become very problematic and you’re going to develop long face.
[00:04:16] Scott Benton: And it’s all affecting your cases.
[00:04:19] Scott Benton: If it’s affecting all of your cases, then no wonder you’ve developed a case of law firm long face. The step I’m talking about is building relationships with your clients. If your workflow is in a state of chaos, Then, of course, you’re going to be overwhelmed and you’re going to feel like you have absolutely no control over anything that you do.
[00:04:39] Scott Benton: So to streamline that workflow, you’ve got to talk to your clients about their cases. You’ve got to be able to spend time with them to help clarify their objectives and to dig deeper into their background and into their story. You’ve got to ask them why questions such as why do you want to recover an interest in the sale of that house?
[00:04:58] Scott Benton: Or who else [00:05:00] knows about this previous engagement? Or what will you do with the money once you have it? These types of questions, as well as learning more about your client’s backstory, they’re really going to help you understand the big why.
[00:05:12] Scott Benton: And that’s going to help you streamline your to do list because now you’re far more focused with the work you’re doing. You know why it’s being done. And when you’ve done this with all of your cases, the ambiguity vanishes. You have a separate to do list for each case because you’ve recorded everything in your attorney’s notes and many more case facts your clients have given you. You’ve cleaned up your entire workflow pipeline. You now know the priorities of the tasks that you have to complete.
[00:05:40] Scott Benton: And once again, you feel like you’ve taken control back of all of your cases and it all started with building relationships with your clients. And then, wouldn’t you know it, that law firm long face affliction has long since disappeared. When you look around the world, it suddenly appears to be filled with a sense of joy and [00:06:00] wonderment that you thought had disappeared for good, but wouldn’t you know it, there it is once again for you to enjoy.
[00:06:07] Scott Benton: So I hope that’s been helpful. My name is Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode. Now if this podcast is material that you like and you want to get notified whenever we post a new episode, you can go to our website. Our website is classroom2courtroom.
[00:06:22] Scott Benton: com. That’s classroom, the number two, courtroom. com. You can leave us your contact information. We’ll send you an email anytime we post a new episode. You can also stay on top of all of our new episodes by sharing, liking, and subscribing wherever you find this podcast. And until the next episode, we hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place, one client at a time
[00:06:43] Scott Benton: thank you so much.
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