A more efficient outlook to the Legal Practice with Microsoft Outlook

by PracticeLeague

In the course of their practice, lawyers must meet make and keep appointments with clients, must remember when they are due for the numerous appearances in court and must be able to schedule and view deadlines on case and project deliverables, as well as keep track and remind themselves to make the innumerable meetings and conferences that have been scheduled. Moreover, lawyers often work on cases in teams and work together to fulfill deadlines. So all the team members on a case must be ‘on the same page’ as far as knowing when their deadlines or the tasks assigned to them are due or when their group meeting together is scheduled.

Doing this manually is very cumbersome and time consuming. MS Outlook Calendar feature serves as a very useful tool for managing the above mentioned challenges of the legal practice. From business critical tasks such as client appointments and project deadlines to administrative tasks such as booking conference rooms, MS Outlook Calendar proves extremely useful for lawyers.

MS Outlook also facilitates collaboration over deadlines and tasks, as in teams who might be working together on a case, by allowing the sharing of the calendar created, so that the people concerned can view it. Sharing can either be done by e-mail attachment or use of shared settings in Outlook for internal teams, just as many already share their calendars with their assistants. When distributing and sharing calendars, senders can control permission levels for recipients to view-only, revise, re-circulate, etc.

Following are some capabilities in MS Outlook for managing legal matters and streamlining collaboration within the firm:

Calendar features:

	Creating and viewing multiple calendars, as tiled frames as overlays or in separate screens
	Sharing calendars within internal teams (via Exchange server) or outside the organization (via e-mail or Outlook sharing)
	Importing calendars in either html or the common .ics file format (e.g. either a private project calendar, or a public calendar)
	appointments and events appear in different colors on one compiled calendar screen
	Scheduling conference rooms and ancillary services such as catering, A/V, etc using the Room Finder feature.
	Setting up and sharing planning calendars for long-term projects, such as annual events, budget planning, or software roll-outs, as well as short term deadlines such as a major litigation case, regulatory investigation, securities offering, etc.
	Scheduling one-time or recurring meetings for individuals or teams, sending invitations

MS Outlook also enables lawyers to assign tasks to team members and track their fulfillment with ease:

Tasks features:

	Setting and updating tasks and deadlines, setting reminders and flags, entering other tasks related information such as time allocation and expenses
	Linking tasks between calendars so that reminders may be set for assignors to check status of assignee tasks
	Attaching notes and documents to a task
	Setting up daily and weekly task lists; viewing them

Using these features you can deploy the capability of Outlook’s Calendar feature to its fullest to accomplish important legal project management work efficiently and with ease Uberall Practice Management Solution is a Ready-To-Use, Pay-As-You-Go Law Practice Software to assist Law Firms, Audit Firmsand Consultancy Firms manage their Practice in real time. This ready to use software includes Microsoft Outlook integrated Time keeping, Automated Billing, Client Ledgers, Case Calendars, Task Management, Reminders/Alerts and Ready Dashboards to manage and grow your professional practice.

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