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Time Management for Attorneys, Updated Edition

You did not go to law school to spend every day reacting to emails, interruptions, client emergencies, and an endless list of unfinished work.

Time Management for Attorneys: A Lawyer’s Guide to Decreasing Stress, Eliminating Interruptions & Getting Home on Time gives attorneys practical strategies for moving out of reactive survival mode and taking greater control of their time, practice, and life.

In this newly updated edition, Mark Powers and Shawn McNalis share time-tested systems developed through decades of coaching attorneys and law firm owners. Through practical examples, exercises, worksheets, and real-life experiences, you will learn how to create a more focused, predictable, and productive way of working.

Inside the book, you will learn how to:

Move from a reactive work style to a proactive one
Establish boundaries that protect your time, energy, and priorities
Build a Time Template that creates structure without eliminating flexibility
Group similar tasks together to reduce task-switching and improve focus
Use the Three-Part Power Hour for staff communication, focused production, and client callbacks
Take control of email overload and work toward Inbox Zero
Reduce interruptions from clients, team members, technology, and yourself
Delegate more effectively using clear systems and accountability
Prepare your firm so you can take a real vacation without everything falling apart

The Updated Edition also connects these daily strategies to the larger vision of building a Great Practice and a Great Life. The goal is not simply to fit more work into your day. It is to make intentional decisions about how you work, what deserves your attention, and how your practice can better support the life you want to lead.

With the right tools and habits, more of your schedule can become predictable, your team can operate more independently, and you can spend less time managing chaos. It really is possible to build a successful practice that serves your life instead of controlling it.

Price: $24.95

Book Detail

Published: June 2026
Publisher: Atticus Ink
Language: English
ISBN-13: 979-8-234-05734-1

Reviews

Mark Chinn

Chinn & Associates, Attorney at Law

Time Management for lawyers is a must read, particularly for lawyers who feel like they are caught on the proverbial treadmill. I have worked personally with the authors for almost 15 years. I benefited from three years of weekly coaching with Shawn McNalis and this book contains everything that I have learned in those years of coaching with Shawn.

In my thirty years of experience as a trial lawyer, I have witnessed most lawyers being led around by the nose by their practices, chasing billable hours and living a life tied to the time sheet. Mark Powers and Shawn McNalis show lawyers how to prioritize their lives and maximize the use of their time. They actually show lawyers how to work less and make more! They also show lawyers how to create practices which serve them instead of the other way around. This book can be read in a matter of hours and can then serve as a resource for making life improving changes. I owe an improved business life and full family life to Mark and Shawn. Buy it, read it and re-read it.

Richard West, Esq.

West Family Law Group

I have taken a number of time management courses over the past 20 years, and this book is the first one that has tied all the different concepts together and made them specific to attorneys. When I find myself getting in trouble is when I get away from the concepts explained in the book.

Time Management for Attorneys is mandatory reading for my associates and a valuable gift for referral sources. If there’s an attorney, friend, business partner or referral source that you care about, give them this book. The best way of becoming successful is making those around you successful.

Richard West, Esq.
West, Green & Associates

Eric Goidel

Borah, Goldstein, Altschuler, Nahins & Goidel, P.C.

We all have the same amount of time, and enough of it. It is just that some of us utilize time much more effectively than others, argues Mark Powers and Shawn McNalis in their new book Time Management for Attorneys: A Lawyer’s Guide to Decreasing Stress, Eliminating Interruptions and Getting Home on Time. The title of the book is to some extent a misnomer, because it is much more than a book about time management. It is about adopting and adhering to personal and professional statements as to how you want to live your life both inside and outside of the office. It is about focus management and energy management, performing similar and repetitive tasks within the same block of time and performing challenging tasks at a time of day when you are at your best.

The authors also set forth a road map for unshackling you from the technician’s life at your desk, helping to turn you into an entrepreneur. This process all begins with careful client selection and educating your clients to need you, while being willing to deal with other personnel in your firm. Successful delegation, the creation of “designated hitters,” and making of “preemptive strikes,” are some of the tools taught by Powers and McNalis which will create significant free time for you to work on, and grow your business. And yes… don’t forget to use that new found time for family, hobbies, volunteerism, recreation, spirituality, and God forbid, a long vacation.