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Lawyers must adapt to new working days by minimizing the time they spend adjusting their calendars for achieving work efficiency 

Scheduling and the constant "calendaring" of tasks and meetings can take a lot of time away from lawyers' work. 

With the advent of the pandemic, lawyers have adapted to new working days: longer, more extensive and full of telematic meetings, which meant blocks of time where they had to dedicate exclusively to chatting either with colleagues, firm management, partners or clients. 

In a survey conducted by the technology company Reclaim.ai, among the different professionals surveyed, the vast majority of them said that they spend 20% of their weekly working hours adjusting their calendars. This is significant considering that, if true, lawyers would spend a total of 46 working days during the year working on their calendars. 

An added problem with calendaring is the confusion it can create with the scheduling of personal and non-professional events. In fact, more than 10% of the professionals surveyed in the aforementioned study say that they use a single calendar to record both personal and professional events. While this may seem insignificant on paper, on a day-to-day basis it can take up valuable time for lawyers, who have to segment non-work tasks from work-related ones in their calendar.

Excessive scheduling also leads to cancellation of meetings. The factors that cause a meeting to be cancelled online are myriad, but the Reclaim.ai study highlights the main concerns that lurk in the minds of those who decide to cancel a meeting:

- The importance of the meeting to the business

- The impact the cancellation will have on the team

- The job title of those who were going to attend the meeting

With the rise of teleworking, time boundaries are disappearing. It is becoming less and less unusual to schedule meetings outside working hours, exponentially increasing the number of meetings or calls that are ultimately cancelled. 

To avoid cancellation of telematic meetings, lawyers tend to "block their time", i.e. decide which hours they will abstain from any other eventuality, in order to devote themselves entirely to one or several specific tasks. But this is unrealistic in practice, as unexpected events often come up that disrupt the lawyer's schedule (urgent calls from clients, requests from colleagues, etc.)

Therefore, one tip for achieving efficiency in working hours may be to reduce the number of hours spent scheduling, cancelling or rescheduling events. It is recommendable to automate these tasks as much as possible.