Sometimes we find ourselves working on tasks and in ways that have little or no influence on what matters to our organisation. Putting a stop to that feeling of being drawn in 100 different directions at the one time will help you to develop a sense of focus, structure, order, direction and strategy in your practice.

A feeling of being more in control of your work and your career allows you to enjoy your work more. Rather than pay too much attention to whatever work hits the desk, consider these five effective management habits below.

Some of us never report because we don’t have to or we take for granted as fact that senior management knows how much value we are adding. Instead of assuming that the value of your work speaks for itself, report regularly to senior management on what you’ve achieved.

It’s easy to underestimate the importance of good management reporting. When we do report, too often we do so in ways that reflect how lawyers look at the world, rather than how senior managers look at the world.

Structure your reports around the organisation’s top priorities, rather than legalistic headings. Describe the systems and documentation you’re putting in place in the legal department.

Include performance data to illustrate where your work comes from, where your time goes and where you spend money.

See Reporting to senior management.

Many people are so busy they don’t look beyond whatever hits their desk for ways they can contribute to solving the things that matter most to their employer (especially things that have no obvious legal dimension).

Filter out the things that don’t deserve your attention. Don’t assume that all the important projects in the company are hitting your desk or that everything is worth your attention.

Focusing your greatest efforts on unearthing and understanding your organisation’s top priorities helps solve them (even if there are no immediate or obvious legal dimensions).

See Solving top priorities.

Systems help introduce more leverage, consistency and order into a practice.

Don’t try to keep everything in your head. Document the way you do activities that need doing on a regular basis, or that are very important for the running of your legal department.

Developing and using systems to handle repetitive tasks is an efficient way to ease the burden of recurrent tasks and to achieve leverage for your efforts (i.e. do more with less).

See Developing systems.

Gather data about where your work comes from, where your time goes, where you spend money and collate it into simple systems.

From the resulting reports, data can be used in a meaningful way that can improve your work practices and prove your value.

See Gathering performance data.

Low level “stuff” prevents you getting to more important activities and having time to think. Structure in your day helps you to avoid doing “stuff” so you can have blocks of uninterrupted time to think through complex issues.

See Avoiding “stuff”.