Beyond the Desk:

Stretched thin

Ever feel like crawling under your desk to avoid asking someone on your team to take on more work?

In immigration law, it’s easy to miss what’s actually on everyone's plate. Case timelines are unpredictable, while the complexity of a matter can be difficult to gauge. That’s not to mention a dozen other variables that make it tough to forecast how much work is actually needed for each case—and when.

Meanwhile, a large majority of immigration attorneys—about 88% according to AILA’s Marketplace Study 2022—say their personal workload is either all they can handle or more than they can handle.

Measuring work

So how do you account for upcoming vacations, hiring needs, and other shifts in available resources across an already busy team?

A well-designed workload capacity system can be a huge asset—whether it’s a dashboard view in your CMS or monthly automated report. Unearthing and presenting the data behind your team's workload can help overcome blind spots and better account for variables in each case's lifecycle.

And it's important to remember it doesn’t need to be fancy! Law firms dealing with technical limitations in their existing case management system can put together a simple workaround.

The right tools for the job

For example, I led a project to streamline the firm-wide workflow for initiating new cases for a 35-employee immigration firm where its common for legal assistants to work on cases for multiple attorneys. A common complaint: attorneys weren't fully aware of what assistants' workload capacity looked like when distributing new cases.

Dealing with ongoing constraints in their CMS' ability to capture the relevant data, we ultimately created a solution using their existing MS365 account, including Microsoft's Power Automate, Forms, Lists, and Planner.

With a short form completed at the start of each case, attorneys were able to consistently capture (and share) useful data that had previously floated around via random emails, Teams chats, and handwritten notes. Gone were the days of legal assistants sorting through disparate intake notes depending on who was assigning the case.

From there, we used Power BI to help attorneys visualize how workload was distributed across their team, with the ability to filter and compare by case type, initiation date, billing details, and other case-related metrics. Suddenly, the firm's managing attorneys could easily see where recent cases had been assigned, and act accordingly.

Strategic planning

An attorney in your firm just brought on a new corporate client aiming to file 10 new L-1B petitions this month? It's nice to have more than 'vibes' to rely on when figuring out how to distribute the work. Better yet, a strong grasp on workload distribution and some intentional communication around team capacity can help address potential burnout.  

And a smart workload capacity system can also be a great resource for more strategic work. Think of projects like establishing an incremental ramp-up period for new employees, or setting your hiring plans for the year. Turning to actionable, structured data from your existing workload isn't a bad place to start.

With the right tools and approach, law firms can transform how they allocate work, plan for the future, and support their teams.