Scott Benton: [00:00:00] Hey everyone, it’s Scott Benton. I am the host of the classroom 2 courtroom podcast. How are you doing today? We are a podcast dedicated to law students, recent law graduates. That is people who have just passed the bar maybe looking for the first job in the legal field or maybe you’ve been working there for the last two or three years and you’re looking for a change.
Our whole objective is to teach you what you need to know in order to practice law our you theory is that law school does not teach you how to practice law neither does a bar prep exam and that’s why the classroom 2 courtroom podcast is here to fill in that gap for you.
Today’s question that we’re going to look at is why should I care about attorney notes?
Why should I care about attorney notes? And in order to answer that question, first, we’re going to define what are attorney notes. We’re going to define those [00:01:00] so that we can answer your question of why are they so important?
Scott Benton: So first of all, what exactly are attorney notes? Now, attorney notes, assuming you’re in litigation or you have a client that you’re working with, there’s some kind of case that you have that you’re going to be digging into.
Attorney notes. In theory, that is going to be the first thing that you do. You’re going to open up a new document. You’re going to title it attorney notes and for that specific case. And essentially what you’re going to do is you’re just going to dump everything into that file that you’re holding in your brain.
The whole point is to put everything on a file so that you don’t have to memorize every little detail about that case. It exists somewhere on a file associated with that case. And that is going to become your attorney notes. Now, every time something new happens on that case, let’s say you receive a correspondence of some kind or you [00:02:00] receive some sort of documentation.
Maybe there’s a notice that you receive or a pleading of some kind. You’re going to go to that attorney notes file and you’re going to summarize it. Remember to put a date and a timestamp, it’s real important that you put that timestamp because maybe more than one thing comes in that day. So you want to be able to differentiate new developments that come in throughout the day.
If that should happen, it doesn’t always happen, but if it does, it really needs to be documented when this came in and then this came in and then this came in.
So you want to include that date and time stamp and that’s going to go in your attorney notes.
now over time, if you’ve done this correctly, you’ve recorded every single new development that’s come in for that case over time, you’re going to have a really nice journal of that particular case. So essentially you’re writing a book for every case and that book is written in the attorney notes.
Now one thing to note about attorney notes is [00:03:00] that at the end of a case, once it’s been concluded and all the files are going back to your client, attorney notes are not a part of that file. In other words, the client that you’re working with never sees these, so you have autonomy, you have complete freedom to write whatever you want in those notes.
If you have certain thoughts or questions or ideas that you want to be able to record in these attorney notes, you’re free to do so because they are never going to go to the client. And you want to make sure that when these cases of yours get wrapped up that the attorney notes are definitely not included in the distribution of those files at any time.
Only the people that are in your firm are ever going to see these attorney notes, chances are you’re going to be the only one.
Another reason that attorney notes are written, by the way, is sometimes a case will be moved from you to another attorney for whatever reason. And when that does happen, these attorney notes, this sort of [00:04:00] sequential journal that you’ve kept of this case can easily be read by the new attorney and they can get up to speed quickly and understand what this case is all about.
So it becomes a very, very valuable tool for your firm in the event that another attorney is going to take over a case or if someone needs to know what is going on with this case, what has transpired already, where we are and what needs to happen in the future, then they have the attorney notes that they can refer to and read and understand everything that they need to know about the attorney notes but for the most part, this is going to be a document that only you are going to be using and that only you are going to be updating so that you can keep track of everything.
Now, the reason again that you have these attorney notes and to answer the question of why they are so valuable is because it’s going to be a mind dump onto a file to get that information out of your head.
Now, if you have 20 or 30 clients or 20 or 30 cases or clients, [00:05:00] sometimes even more than that’s a lot of information to try and memorize. That’s a lot of information to keep in your head and what’s going to happen is it’s going to create an enormous amount of stress for you. It’s going to create stress ,it’s going to create anxiety as you’re trying to sort of keep up with all of the little details and the deadlines that you have to hit.
And all the new information that’s coming in for those cases that you then mentally have to go in and update in your mind instead of doing that for dozens of cases, you are for each and every case, you’re going to have attorney notes for that particular case, and you are going to just dump it all there.
That means you don’t have to memorize anything. If you need to know something about a case or refresh your memory on a development that’s taken place, you can go to those attorney notes and it’s all going to be contained there. It’s all going to be written down. You can quickly scan them, you can read them, you can update them as you need be, Let’s say Let’s say [00:06:00] some document comes out and you turn around a communication, maybe you send out a letter to opposing counsel, you’re going to summarize that date and timestamp it and update that attorney notes for that particular case.
So that’s how you’re going to handle it. So let’s say you know, for a sort of a mind game here or a, mind exercise, let’s call it.
Let’s say I told you that there is something that you can use that is going to dramatically reduce your stress. It’s going to make it so that you enjoy your weekends. And you enjoy your time at night. Let’s say that Sunday night rolls around and typically, you’re not start to develop inside your stomach because you’re thinking about going to work Monday.
And let’s say there’s something that would just immediately remove that. You’re gonna enjoy your Sunday nights. You’re even gonna enjoy your Monday mornings coming to work. You’re gonna have plenty of work to do Monday. You’re going to be organized in terms of your to do list, which is part of the success cycle that we talk about [00:07:00] on the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast.
You’re going to have plenty to do on each case. You’re going to know what all that is because your attorney notes are going to populate your to do list or in our success cycle, it’s called G sheets. G stands for get it done. That’s ultimately what is going to be instrumental in populating your to do list, but so are the attorney notes.
When you dump everything onto the attorney notes, it’s now going to produce a number of to do list items for you to go in, even Monday morning and start knocking through those. You’re never going to have any sort of deficit in terms of tasks that you’ll be doing. Those are all billable tasks. Those are then recorded as time spent on the legal services that you’ve provided for those particular cases and all of that comes from your attorney notes.
It’s nothing that you have to keep in your mind. Your mind needs to be emptied so that you can use it for thinking what it’s supposed to be used for and that [00:08:00] you can be as nimble as possible, it’s going to improve your case strategies, it’s going to make you a much less stressed person.
It’s going to make it so that when your friends invite you out to dinner. You’re not preoccupied, you’re not stressed out, you’re not sort of having a difficult time spending that dinner time with your friends that you’re going to really be enjoying yourself when you’re around them because all of that information is now recorded onto your attorney notes and this is fundamentally the primary reason why attorney notes are so important, this is the reason.
Additionally, it’s going to help you advance your career. If you go into your first job as an attorney and you know to use Attorney notes right from the start and when you get new cases, then you’re going to sit down and create a file called attorney notes for that particular case, and you’re going to just put everything in there, and you’re going to consistently update those attorney notes as new developments come in for that case.[00:09:00]
Then this is by far the best possible way to really launch your career and really sort of soar off into the stratosphere because of all of the efficiencies that you’re going to create by using these attorney notes, you’re going to generate an enormous amount of work for yourself, your to do list is never ever going to be empty.
You’re always going to have lot of work to do as you put in this new information that comes along for your cases into your attorney notes. That Is also going to generate new to do list items for you to put on your to do list and that you’re going to go and execute and provide those legal services and you’re going to bill your clients and start all over again.
So attorney notes really become a critical key component to your career as an attorney. The alternative is to try and memorize everything on all of your dozens of cases. That’s going to become extremely stressful. You’re going to burn yourself out. You’re not going to enjoy working as an attorney, whereas if you use these attorney notes, that’s when the practice [00:10:00] of law becomes fun.
So, Attorney notes become critical because it’s the difference between practicing law as a fun activity and practicing law as a painful activity. And as much as possible, we want to make sure that you’re enjoying your career as an attorney, that it is actually a fun experience for you. And the key to making the practice of law fun is by focusing in on these attorney notes and dumping all of that information you’re trying to hold in your head on to a document that is going to free up your mind.
And I can’t think of anything more important than freeing up your mind. Again, you’re going to enjoy your nights and your weekends, you’re going to enjoy your free time, and most importantly, you’re going to enjoy your time working as an attorney because of just how efficient and organized everything is simply by using the attorney notes and dumping everything you can into them.
So I hope this has been helpful. I hope this is helpful information. Now we can’t possibly cover [00:11:00] everything there is to know about attorney notes. And so we’re going to spend several episodes talking about attorney notes. This is a topic that’s going to come up over and over and over again. We don’t want to create really long podcast episodes.
We know that your time is valuable, you’re very, very busy. When you listen to these podcasts episodes we know that we’ve got to respect your time and that we need to sort of parse out these ideas a little at a time. When it comes to attorney notes, this is a lot of information to cover in order to make you effective, in order for you to understand all the nuances of attorney notes and all the benefits and all the uses of attorney notes and how to best utilize that as a tool to launch your career throughout the time that you spend as an attorney, whether that’s 30 40 50 years, attorney notes are going to become your new best friend.
So I hope that’s helpful, I hope this is useful information. We will return to this subject over and over and over again. We’re going to record several episodes that are going to [00:12:00] talk about some component of attorney notes or another.
And if this is useful information to you, if you want to get an alert, every time we put out a new episode of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast, you can go over to our website or website is Classroom2Courtroom. com that’s Classroom2Courtroom.com. You can put in your name and email address.
And every time we put out a new episode of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast, you’re going to get an alert and you can go check out that new material. And if this is valuable material to you, then I encourage you to like share and subscribe. We hope you’ll join us on the next episode of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast.
And until then, we hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place. One client at a time. Thanks so much for listening and take care.
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