---

Lawyers are professionals who have to manage their time to the best of their ability. On certain days they have to endure stressful hours and, on others, they have a lot of free time

What they do have to deal with is long-term transactions and projects, which have an added difficulty compared to small tasks: consistency. 

To ensure that long-term operations do not turn into a nightmare, experts believe it is important to keep the following guidelines in mind: 

- Motivation is essential

It is clear that, as a first step towards a major transaction, it is important to be highly motivated. There are many reasons why a lawyer may be motivated by a new project (achievements, reputation, creativity, knowledge). 

The important thing is that employees are motivated, for whatever reason.

- Clear strategy

If small tasks require strategy, so do large projects. All employees have to know the steps to be taken and have to know why all tasks are to be undertaken. 

A strategy has to take into account the possible obstacles that may arise and the destination to be reached. 

- Divide and conquer

Despite being an oft-repeated phrase, its application is quite useful and practical nowadays. Lawyers need to be able to divide large projects into small tasks, so that they can keep track of all the progress they are making. 

The lawyer's mentality is often suited to the quick completion of small tasks, so this advice can be very useful.

- Schedule goals

Scheduling daily objectives is a great help at the beginning of each day. Setting the scope and timing of each task is a smart move, and if this is done in sync across all lawyers in a department, performance will increase exponentially.

- Booking working hours

This is a very complicated action, but at the same time it has many benefits. When an employee sets aside a certain number of hours to perform a fixed task, he or she has to do it regardless of what happens (for example, if a new email chain is sent to him or her). 

The important thing is to be able to consider what is really urgent and what is not. That is why, by booking certain hours, it is assumed that everything that is done during that booked time will be more urgent than anything else that happens during that day. Obviously there are exceptions, but it is the worker himself who has to discern whether he has to stop his work for other work that has just arisen.