Transactional Attorney Tips Forum

[AureliusCapital]

I thought it might be a good time to refresh some tips for transactional attorneys. Summers are settling in and the first years will be starting in a couple of months, this might be somewhere they can go prior to their start date. Lastly, it seems a lot of people are lateraling and a refresh might be nice. With WFH becoming more prominent as well, some of the dated threads may not apply as well.

I included some topics below, but would love some additional insight and tips. I have found a good amount in this section over the years so hoping we can help others improve their game.

Organization: I file all of my emails as they come in and keep my inbox as a to do list. If I fall behind, I use the weekend to catch-up and clean up. I also organize email by Client Name and sub folders for each deal. I save to my personal folder on the system all of the agreements for deals I have been on (Purchase Agreement, IP Agreements, etc.), so this helps me quickly search for precedent language.

Billing: Bill everything. Not the most efficient biller as I always miss quick phone calls and emails, but trying to get better at this. I also try to have my time entered by start of business the next day.

Productivity: I keep reminding myself that texting, walking around, browsing sports just means I will work longer that day. I try to be as efficient as possible but some days the motivation is not there. I try to keep to do lists off on a pad in front of me that is very short hand, then a larger pad off to the side that contains all my notes for the to do's. I may move this to an iPad soon.

Health: Exercise as much as you can and try to maintain a consistent sleep schedule. Eat healthy and drink a lot of water. This helps me stay sane.

Motivation/Discipline: This wavers the most. I try to keep my eyes on the goal where I see my career going, but the lulls happen often. Honestly, reading TLS and Fishbowl help me stay motivated to work, maybe its just chatting with colleagues. Also working with partners I like really helps too, they make me want to do good work for them.

Learning: I try to review comments the partner makes and understand why. I keep a large Word document of random things I learn (opinion points, searches needed, questions clients typically ask, etc.) and randomly scroll through that and remind myself some of these points.

Would love additional tips, tricks and guides on any of the above topics or anything else that would be helpful.

[Grazzhoppa]

Couldn’t agree more with all of these. I also keep a spreadsheet, organized by client name, with every deal name, c/m#, one sentence summary of the deal, responsible partner and client contacts. This makes it helps to stay organized and makes billing quick. Another tip is to save external contacts into your outlook contacts - everything will sync with your cell phone and you’ll never have to search for email addresses. This also makes it easy to keep contacts when you switch firms.

[legalpotato]

On the email filing, I used to try and keep things filed, but if something gets mis-filed (including w/ the automatic filing tools), I've been burned. So now I only file away important things that I would want to easily be able to reference later without searching the inbox, like LOIs or emails with other deal terms, VDR login, etc.