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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: Hey everyone, Scott Benton here. How are you? I’m 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.
[00:00:20] Scott Benton: And today, we’re going to talk about how to write attorney notes.
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[00:01:13] Scott Benton: Attorney notes are a subject that does come up often on this podcast, so These do get covered from time to time. Hopefully we’re able to bring you something new or some kind of, I don’t know, additional spin or kind of an angle on attorney notes that maybe you haven’t thought of.
[00:01:28] Scott Benton: Also, one of the best ways to learn is simply through repetition. So a lot of the ideas and themes that we talk about on this podcast do get repeated. They hopefully get repeated in variety and they connect in different ways. So you can see. How the whole idea of practicing law intertwines and that it does intertwine.
[00:01:48] Scott Benton: It’s easy, but it’s complex. If you understand that how easy and how complex it is, then it just makes you a better, stronger attorney. Now we talk about attorney notes from time to time [00:02:00] because Attorney notes, they’re just, they’re critically important to your work as an attorney. And they’re going to help you in completing the success cycle because with your attorney notes, it becomes crystal clear as to what it is you have to do and what ultimately ends up on your to do list.
[00:02:17] Scott Benton: And the to do list is the engine. It’s the lifeblood of your ability to practice law. As an attorney you are set Selling your time and your expertise inside of that time is where lives your expertise and your ability to help a client navigate their legal objectives that they have come to you to help them with.
[00:02:38] Scott Benton: So we want to touch on the process of writing attorney notes since attorney notes fill your to do list and from there you can perform those legal services. All day long, and each time you perform one task, you then bill for your time, and you get paid, and then you start all over again.
[00:02:54] Scott Benton: And that’s the three part process that makes up the success cycle a subject we talk about [00:03:00] frequently here. In fact, this entire podcast is built around the success cycle. And in fact, if you learn the success cycle before you start your first legal job, or even if you go do maybe a law clerk position while you’re waiting for your bar results to come in, you’re going to be able to jump straight into your legal work without having to learn this from scratch, and it’s going to make you look really sharp.
[00:03:22] Scott Benton: So let’s get into it. How do you write attorney notes? Now, keep in mind that attorney notes are never ever shared with the client. At the end of the case, they don’t go to the client with all of their other documents. They never go further than the firm. So you can literally put anything you like in those attorney notes.
[00:03:40] Scott Benton: They’re for your reference and maybe for, Other law clerks or maybe for paralegals, other people involved in the case, they can read your attorney notes and they can get up to speed very quickly on every aspect of the case that they are also now going to be helping you to work on. So they’re really for your reference, but sometimes other [00:04:00] people will read them.
[00:04:00] Scott Benton: And then, of course, if a case gets transferred to another attorney, then those attorney notes become very helpful for the new attorney. To get up to speed with where the case is, but they are for your reference, and you just want to absolutely mind dump everything you can into those attorney notes.
[00:04:16] Scott Benton: Simply so you’re not carrying around all that information in your head, because if you’re doing that, it’s just going to simply bog down your most valuable workspace. Your most valuable workspace, of course, is that gray matter. between your two ears. You want to protect that with your life. So you’re going to open up a new document when you get a new case and you’re going to give it the name of your case file and then attorney notes and you’re going to put that in a separate folder because remember these are not going to your client at any time.
[00:04:44] Scott Benton: Now at first you’re going to write down everything you can about the case that you have in your head. After probably reading all the case notes, maybe meeting with your client once or twice. Who knows? But you know a lot about the case. So far, you’re gonna put in all the [00:05:00] details in your attorney notes.
[00:05:01] Scott Benton: You’re gonna any thoughts that you have about the case. You’re gonna include those. Maybe there’s some case objectives or ideas that you have about the case of strategy that you might want to include and any sort of Thoughts that you think might be important to the case, either now or in the future, just put it all in there.
[00:05:19] Scott Benton: Dump everything in and remember spelling doesn’t count here. It helps other people might read your document later on, especially if the case gets transferred. But for the most part, really, things don’t need to be spelled correctly. It helps if they are. You don’t have to punctuate correctly. It helps if you do, but it’s not necessary.
[00:05:38] Scott Benton: Now, here’s the key. Every time something new happens on that case, you’re going to stop what you’re doing, you’re going to go to that attorney notes file, you’re going to open that up, and you’re going to add in a new entry. And you do that by date and time stamping this new entry. You’re going to put in that date, you’re going to put in the time, because sometimes you put in [00:06:00] the time because every now and again, Two things will happen in the same day or three things or four things or whatever.
[00:06:05] Scott Benton: So you want to have those separated out by time. So you’re going to put in a date and a timestamp and you’re going to summarize whatever just happened for the case. So who knows? Maybe you got a deposition summons or you filed an 850 petition or there’s some new piece of information that’s come in, let’s say from the opposing party.
[00:06:24] Scott Benton: Whatever happens, whatever that new piece of information is or whatever that action is. Now you have a record of that taking place when you put it into your attorney notes. So each time something new occurs, that’s exactly what you want to do on the case. Now, keep in mind that every single case you have is going to have its own set of attorney notes.
[00:06:51] Scott Benton: And whenever anything new happens on a case, you’re going to open up the attorney notes for that case. You’re going to date and timestamp a new entry and you’re [00:07:00] going to summarize what happened. Now, keep in mind that whenever something new happens on a case, that’s also going to inform your to do list, because now there’s probably something new for you to do, which is going to inform the legal services you’re going to need to provide for that case, so it’s going to end up on your to do list.
[00:07:15] Scott Benton: When you’re doing this process for all of your cases, and let’s just pick a number. Let’s say you have 30 cases, so there’s 30 of these attorney notes that you have. You’re very quickly going to see that you’re never ever going to run out of to do list items, which means that you’re going to hit your minimum billable hourly requirement about as quickly as possible.
[00:07:36] Scott Benton: And that’s going to happen day after day. And that’s why you need to pay attention to these attorney notes, because this becomes the raw ore that’s going to inform your to do list. That’s going to inform your legal services. It’s going to inform your billing entries, and it’s going to inform the money that you get paid by your clients for the legal services that you’ve delivered.
[00:07:55] Scott Benton: Ultimately, that means that you’re going to go home at the end of the day feeling very accomplished and very good. You’re going to [00:08:00] have a great evening indeed. And hopefully it’s Friday night because that means you’re going to have a great weekend as well. You’re also going to know exactly where you are in the work that you need to complete for your cases and where you need to start the next morning. So I hope that helps you understand a little bit more about how to complete attorney notes.
[00:08:18] Scott Benton: They are life changing and they’re the key to your success in practicing law as a very highly productive attorney.
[00:08:25] 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.
[00:08:40] 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 [00:09:00] client at a time
[00:09:01] Scott Benton: thank you so much.
