Deep Work Techniques for Legal Professionals
Legal work requires focus. However, in a profession faced with a constant barrage of notifications and urgent demands, finding time for focused work is becoming a skill all its own. That’s why legal professionals should consider learning more about a technique called “deep work” to regain control over their schedules and improve the quality of their high-stakes work.
Key Takeaways for Legal Teams
Deep work is a technique used to create a sustained, distraction-free environment for focusing on demanding tasks.
Practicing deep work helps reduce context switching and improve the quality of work.
Legal teams performing complex, sustained tasks like research, case analysis, or document review benefit from the continuous focus provided by deep work.
Technology and collaboration tools can help reduce distractions and support deep work.
What Is Deep Work?
Deep work is a technique used to create a distraction-free environment that’s primed for cognitively demanding work. The term was coined in Cal Newport’s Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, which argues that working without distractions, and maintaining extended focus on difficult tasks, can help to double an individual contributor’s output.
The primary goal of deep work is to remove as many distractions as possible in an effort to avoid repeated context switching. Context switching is the seemingly innocuous act of switching between tasks throughout the day. For a lawyer this might look like reading emails in the morning, then reviewing case documents in the afternoon, followed by finalizing administrative tasks in the evening. During each of these tasks, it’s likely a lawyer would become distracted by a client’s phone call, an urgent email, or even the scramble to meet a forgotten deadline.
No matter the reason, switching back and forth between unfinished tasks consumes efficiency and destroys productivity. A study published by the Harvard Business Review in 2022 focused on the average time loss incurred by switching between multiple applications and screens. This “toggle tax” sucks up an average of 4 hours per week, and as the study found, excessive context switching can also lead to increased stress and anxiety.
That’s why a core component of deep work is learning how to effectively eliminate distractions. Unlike administrative tasks that can be performed while multi-tasking, deep work is necessary for more mentally demanding work.
Understanding how to do deep work requires more than just a desire to focus, it involves a commitment to a deep work strategy that reduces both external interruptions and the internal urge to switch tasks.
Beyond simple productivity, research suggests that deep work can actually create a permanent shift in cognitive performance. The human brain is built to strengthen learning pathways and the connections between neurons when concentrating deeply, which is exactly what deep work provides.
Why Deep Work Matters for Legal Professionals
Many of the tasks associated with legal work are tedious, attention-consuming, and cognitively demanding. That’s why deep work has so many practical applications within the practice of law.
Below are a few of the most common tasks in which deep work can benefit legal professionals.
Research: Reading through vast amounts of case law requires dedicated focus. The goal is to find specific information that will provide relevance to the legal matter at hand. To do this correctly and efficiently, it’s best to avoid distractions.
Document Review: Modern discovery often includes the review of massive document sets. This process is foundational in building a legal argument and, as such, requires a high level of accuracy.
Case Analysis: Once evidence is identified, it’s time to evaluate and analyze the facts of the matter. This process demands high-cognitive functioning, which is achieved best during distraction-free blocks.
Writing Motions, Briefs, and More: Translating legal knowledge and case analysis into high-level, persuasive writing requires dedicated time and attention.
Deep Work Techniques to Improve Focus
The mind is a muscle, and like any other muscle in the body it can grow in strength with sustained effort. When first attempting deep work techniques, it’s likely that some distractions will break through. However, with practice and consistency, deep work can become second nature.
To successfully implement a deep work strategy, legal professionals should consider utilizing these specific techniques.
Time Blocking: It may sound simple, but blocking out large amounts of time on your calendar and dedicating that time to deep work is the best place to start. The key is to create a habit of deep work, and scheduling the time to do so is a fantastic first step.
Intentful Meetings: While scheduling meetings is likely a much lower lift for the average legal professional, it’s important to note that maintaining a functional calendar should include only purposeful, efficient meetings. This is even more true when considering the toll of context switching between meetings, which can reduce productivity by up to 40%.
Avoiding Distraction: It’s a good idea to silence all notifications on all relevant devices, such as turning on the “do not disturb” function on a cellphone. It’s also suggested to silence any programs that may send notifications, like email or messaging apps.
Warm-ups: Another aspect of deep work is creating the right mental environment. There are repeatable rituals that can signal to the brain that it's time to focus, things like listening to specific playlists or simply pouring a fresh cup of hot coffee.
Structured Prioritization: It can also be helpful to identify the single most important analytical task before the workday begins, thereby avoiding decision fatigue. It’s easier to prepare for deep work after prioritizing the tasks that would benefit the most from it.
The Eisenhower Matrix
The core of developing an effective deep work habit is mastering the ability to prioritize efficiently. While there are many methods to do so, one of the most simple is the Eisenhower Matrix. Developed by Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, this system starts with categorizing tasks into one of four quadrants.
The first quadrant focuses on tasks that are both urgent and important. These are generally tasks with hard deadlines and significant consequences. In terms of prioritization, these are the tasks that are most suited for deep work. Work items that are still important but not urgent fit into the second quadrant, and include tasks with unclear deadlines that will ultimately contribute to long-term success. While these tasks may not be in immediate need of deep work, they should be scheduled and prioritized.
The third quadrant includes tasks that are urgent, but ultimately not as impactful as other tasks. Items in the third quadrant are perfect for delegation, as they generally include hard deadlines but don’t require a specific skill set to complete. Finally, the fourth quadrant includes tasks that are not urgent or impactful. If a task finds its way to this quadrant, it’s very likely that task is simply a distraction in disguise.
When focusing on deep work, it’s important to primarily focus on the first quadrant of the matrix. If a task isn’t both important and urgent, it may not require intensive, dedicated focus.
Balancing Deep Work with Collaboration
While deep work is an individual endeavor, legal work is often a team effort. The challenge lies in balancing individual focus with the need for team communication. The key is structured communication, setting clear expectations for when team members are offline for deep work and when they are available for collaborative tasks.
Modern elitigation platforms enable teams to collaborate asynchronously, allowing individuals to contribute to a project when it fits their schedule, thereby preserving focus while still enabling effective teamwork. Mastering the ability to collaborate asynchronously is also an essential skill to develop. Teams working asynchronously across industries report a 42% boost in productivity from the effort.
The Right Tools for Deep Work
Deep work isn’t just about finding the time to focus on specific tasks, it’s also about finding the best tools to complete those tasks. Using an ineffective tool, or the wrong tool altogether, can oftentimes stand in the way of cognitively demanding work by becoming a distraction all on its own.
That’s why choosing the right tools to use during deep work is so important. Below are a few of the best tools to use for some of the most cognitively demanding work within the legal profession:
Drafting: Tools like Everlaw Writing Assistant can help organize and synthesize insights from massive datasets into evidence-centered research and writing, even providing citations to source documents.
Categorization: A great example of how AI can automate the review process is Everlaw Coding Suggestions. This tool trains on human instruction to understand the goal of review and is capable of recommending suggested categorization based on a set of human-prompted criteria.
Review: Quickly understand the substance of complicated datasets with tools like Everlaw Review Assistant, which provides citation-backed summaries, uses sentiment analysis to detect emotional tone, and automatically pulls specific data points based on custom extractions.
Learn how Everlaw helps legal teams make the most out of deep work.
Building a Deep Work Habit
Integrating a habit of deep work into daily, weekly, and monthly schedules is not an easy task. When starting out, it’s important to focus on doing it regularly before doing it perfectly. Of course, once momentum has been gained, it’s easy to keep the ball rolling.
