Attorney with ADHD, just joined a firm which lacks a good organizational system for finding form language, past documents, etc. and I'm still struggling to master the search function on the program we use. I'm thinking I need to build an incredibly robust excel sheet and just track everything; does anyone have a better idea? Or an excel file they'd like to share? Frankly, I'd welcome any suggestions or best tips for staying organized, whether it's probate deadlines, finding language,etc. Thanks!

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What program does your law firm use? I started the process of creating an Education folder at my prior firm and saving things to it as I went. Since I was often the only one who used it I was able to organize it as I see fit.

Then, I always chuckled when someone sent around an email saying “does anyone have a form for this?” and I immediately responded with what they needed despite being the only one with ADHD.

I use MyCase now for my own firm. It is a great practice management program that also can house client documents.

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The developer tool in Word is amazing. It takes a little while to set a form up, but the time it saves when you have one form and a handful of possible outputs to different fields each time is amazing.

I used the spreadsheet method when I was at firm with very antiquated systems. It definitely helps, but it can be it’s own job to maintain sometimes and it’s something you won’t really get any credit for. I still think it’s worth it, especially to keep you from missing deadlines and being on top things in general.

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As a side note, I do have an amazing paralegal whose superpower is organization. But she also has other attorneys to look out for and miscommunication can happen. Any advice, tools, or examples to support being organized, able to locate information, and keep track deadlines are welcome.

My firm uses Practice Panther, in which you can create "workflows." So, when I am doing something very deadline heavy, or with lots of steps, I plug in the hearing date and it automatically populates the deadlines for all the other tasks before and after. It's a big help.

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