Welcome to the long-awaited time and personal management issue of Law Practice magazine! Time and personal management are not new topics. We all have adopted various time and personal management techniques and tools throughout our busy careers. But are they still working for us? Do we dread opening up our swamped email inbox? Do we demand peak performance of ourselves but overlook our unhealthy work habits like skipping lunch and exercise breaks? Are we teetering on the verge of burnout or fearing we're headed for a malpractice claim? Because the demands and concerns of the modern lawyer are heavy, this issue of Law Practice magazine focuses on gathering together practical advice for managing your time and finding your balance again.
Special thanks to our issue team led by Courtney Ward-Reichard with help from fellow members of the LP editorial board Tea Hoffmann and Michael J.P. Schewe, in addition to Douglas S. Querin, attorney counselor with the Oregon Attorney Assistance Program.
Look inside for great ideas from your favorite LP columns including Sally Schmidt's Marketing column, "Making Time for Marketing" featuring 12 ways to find balance and manage your time. If a SmartPhone is your key time-management tool, learn the basic security measures you should take—no matter what operating system is in place—by reading Sharon Nelson's and John Simek's Hot Buttons column, "Selecting, Managing and Securing SmartPhones." Karen MacKay's Taking the Lead column, "Time: Find, Manage, Protect It," hits a perfect note with warm encouragement for finding the strategies that work for you. And if your email inbox spilleth over, learn about the tools you need to dig out by reading this month's Practice Management Advice from an Expert column, "Buried Alive? Master Email Overload" by Tracy C. Parks.
Here's just a small sample of features in this time and personal management issue: an interview with David Allen about his Getting Things Done system from Michael Lawyer; "Simple Digital Productivity With Apps, Services and Gadgets" from Sam Glover; "Use Time Management to Find Passion in Your Practice" from Tea Hoffmann; and "Burnout: Avoidable, Not Inevitable" from attorney assistance counselors Meloney C. Crawford and Douglas S. Querin. And because we have so little time to spend looking at all of the various time management programs and books, Michael J.P. Schewe and Courtney Ward-Reichard report on the popular ones in "Time Management Tricks and Techniques."
On behalf of everyone who has contributed to this issue, I hope that within these pages you will find more than enough tips and techniques to help with managing your time and finding your balance again in your professional and personal life.
