Time Management for Lawyers: Win Back Hours with Delegation

December 2025
By Axiom Law

Picture this: It's 5:30 a.m., and you're already answering emails because the house is quiet and you can "get ahead." Lunchtime rolls around, and you eat at your desk, cranking through a contract review. You get home at 6:30 p.m., tell yourself you'll just pop into your home office for "a few minutes," and two hours evaporate. Right before bed, you realize the truth: You're never actually getting ahead.

Sound familiar?

If you've been practicing law for any length of time, you know this cycle intimately. The idea that if you just work a little harder, stay a little later, start a little longer, you'll finally catch up is one of the great myths of legal practice. You will never get ahead. And that realization can either break you or force you to find a better way.

That better way? Delegation.

💡Discover how in-house leaders win back meaningful time through delegation.

Why Most Lawyers Have Trouble Delegating

Here's the uncomfortable truth: Most lawyers are terrible at delegating work. It's not really our fault. Law school never taught us how to do it. When you go in-house, unless you're at a very special company, no one trains you on delegation either. They just tell you "you need to delegate more," which is about as helpful as being told to invent rocket fuel by tomorrow.

So what happens? Most people avoid delegation entirely, clinging to reasons that feel valid:

"I can get it done faster if I just do it myself."

"I don't trust anyone else to do it right."

"It's easier to just handle it than explain it."

And you know what? Both of those first two statements are actually true, but only at first. You can do it faster yourself. You probably will do it better than the person you delegate to, especially initially.

But that's not the point.

The Long Game of Delegation

Effective time management for lawyers isn't about squeezing more hours into your day. It's about making strategic choices with the time you have. And delegation is perhaps the most powerful time management strategy available to you.

Think about it this way: If you won the lottery tomorrow, got hit by the proverbial bus, or were kidnapped by aliens, someone else would have to do your work. You are not indispensable. That might sting a little, but it's liberating too.

The real power of delegation isn't immediate. It's about the long game, developing people who can handle the work you're currently doing, so you can focus on higher-value projects that actually require your skills and experience. Over time, you create a legal team where knowledge isn't hoarded in one person's head, where work doesn't grind to a halt when someone goes on vacation, and where you're not the bottleneck for every single task.

But here's the catch: Proper delegation requires an upfront investment of time that will actually make your life harder in the short term. You'll need to train people, answer questions, review work that isn't quite right, and provide feedback. That's the bubble, the temporary period where you're putting in more time, not less.

The payoff comes months down the road when those important tasks you spent time teaching someone to handle are completely off your plate. That's when you get the time back, exponentially.

Watch the Webinar Delegate to Axiom Legal Talent

 

What You Can (and Should) Delegate 

Before you can delegate effectively, you need to figure out what's actually appropriate to delegate. Not everything should leave your desk. Highly confidential matters, extremely complex legal issues, or politically sensitive projects might need to stay with you.

But here's a good rule of thumb: If you've mastered a task, for example, or done a particular type of contract 150 times, why do you need to do it a 151st time if someone else could learn it?

Try this exercise: For two weeks, track what you're doing and jot down the types of work crossing your desk. Look for patterns:

• What am I doing repetitively?
• What's relatively straightforward once you know the process?
• What could someone with less experience handle with proper training?

That repetitive work? That's your delegation target list.

And don't limit yourself to thinking you can only delegate to other lawyers. If a task doesn't require a law degree, a paralegal or admin might be perfect for it. Reviewing outside counsel invoices for compliance with your billing guidelines? That's a great example of work that doesn't need your particular experience. Train someone else to do it and reclaim that block of time.

Finding the Right Person to Delegate to

Once you know what you want to delegate, you need to find the right person to delegate it to. This isn't about grabbing whoever happens to be walking past your office that day.

Look for people with the right skill set for the task. Don't give a complex litigation matter to someone who only does contracts. Don't give a highly technical patent issue to a generalist. Match the work to the person's background and capabilities.

But beyond skills and experience, look for two critical qualities:

1. Self-starters: People who take initiative, who don't need you to hold their hand through every step, who will proactively ask questions when they're stuck rather than spinning their wheels in silence.
2. Thick skin: Delegation involves feedback, and sometimes that feedback is constructive criticism. You need people who can hear "this isn't quite right, here's how to fix it" without falling apart or getting defensive.

If you look around your legal department and genuinely feel there's no one you can delegate to, that's a red flag. It might mean you need to make some personnel changes.

What If You're a Legal Department of One?

Delegation feels impossible when there's literally no one else on the legal team. But get creative:

• Do you have access to an admin or paralegal, even just part-time?
• Can someone in the business help with intake work? (Sales teams are often willing to help if it means contracts move faster.)
• Could you bring in temporary help or a secondee lawyer for a specific project or to clear a backlog?

Sometimes the solution is bringing in outside support for a defined period. This wouldn’t be a permanent hire; just someone to help you get through a particularly heavy workload or a major project. That can be enough to break the cycle and get you to a more manageable place.

Time Management Strategies for Lawyers: The Training Investment

If you're not willing to invest time in training the person you're delegating to, the delegation will fail. Period.

This is where commitment—one of the three critical elements of successful delegation, comes in. You have to commit to being a teacher, not just someone who pushes work onto other people's desks.

Here are the five keys to effective training:

1. Give Clear Instructions

Tell them exactly what needs to be done and what results you expect. Don't assume they'll understand just because you explained the task. Be patient. Provide context like background on the matter, key documents, important players, and potential issues.

Before they leave the meeting, have them articulate back to you what they're going to do. Ex: "So I'm going to review the vendor contract template, compare it to the new requirements from finance, and draft revised language for the payment terms section. Then I'll send it to you by Thursday for review." If they can't explain it back to you accurately, they don't really understand the assignment yet.

Ask them, "What else do you need from me to do this well?" Make it easy for them to tell you if something's unclear.

2. Provide the Right Resources

Don't make people hunt for the tools they need. Give them:

• Sample forms and templates
• Relevant emails or prior work product
• Access to document management systems
• Names of key contacts in the business
• Background materials they should read

These resources are gold to someone learning a new task. You've accumulated this knowledge over the years. Don't expect them to magically know where everything is or who to talk to.

3. Set Realistic Deadlines

Tell them when you need the work completed. If it's the first time they're handling this type of project, build in buffer time before the actual deadline. You might need a couple of days to review and help them refine the work.

Be flexible if their schedules get crazy or competing priorities emerge. Work together to figure out how this fits with their other commitments.

4. Schedule Check-In Points

This is where communication—the second critical element of delegation—comes into play. Don't just hand off work and disappear until the deadline.

Set up regular check-ins, especially for the first few times someone handles a new task:

• "Let's touch base on Wednesday to see how it's going."
• "Bring me what you have so far on Friday."
• "Send me a quick email if you hit any roadblocks."

Make it easy for them to tell you they're struggling. Never, ever make them feel stupid for not understanding something. That's the fastest way to kill someone's willingness to take on delegated work.

These check-ins protect you, too. You don't want to find out the day before something's due that the work product is completely unusable and you need to start over.

5. Review Work and Provide Constructive Feedback

When they complete the assignment, set aside time to review it thoroughly and give meaningful feedback. This is coaching, the third essential element of effective delegation.

In a recent webinar, The Art of Delegation, Sterling Miller, COO, General Counsel at Hilgers Garben PLLC, shared that the best feedback he ever received as a young lawyer came from people who took the time to explain why something needed to change, citing these examples:

• "This section isn't clear because you're assuming the reader knows the background. Let me show you how to provide that context."
• "You can't phrase it this way in a contract because it creates ambiguity about who has the obligation. Here's a clearer approach."

If the work isn't what you need, explain specifically what needs to be fixed and why it matters. "This isn't good enough" helps no one. "Here's the issue, here's why it's a problem, and here's how to address it" actually teaches something.

Start with what they did well. There's always something positive to point out, even if the overall work product missed the mark. Then address what needs improvement.

Remember: If someone is bright and hardworking, they'll get it. Maybe not the first time, maybe not perfectly the second time, but they'll improve. You did. Every lawyer goes through this learning curve.

Let Go of Perfection (and Micromanagement)

One of the hardest parts of delegation is accepting that someone else might do the work differently than you would.

Here's a hard truth: You need to care about results, not process.

If you're telling someone "No, you have to do step one, then step two, then step three, in exactly that order, using exactly this approach," you're not delegating. You're just creating a human checklist. That's fine for purely mechanical tasks, but it's not real delegation.

Real delegation means letting people find their own paths to the result you need. Maybe they'll approach the problem differently than you would. Maybe they'll organize their work in a different order. As long as they get to the right outcome, does it really matter?

This doesn't mean throwing them in the deep end with zero guidance. You still provide the training, the resources, and the check-ins we discussed. But resist the urge to hover over every decision they make.

Here’s another hard truth. Sometimes, you need to accept "good enough." Not every piece of work needs to be perfect. Sometimes good enough actually works just fine. If you need perfection, be prepared to invest significant time helping them get there. Perfect rarely happens on the first or second attempt.

Stop Waiting for Volunteers

If you're sitting around hoping someone will notice how busy you are and volunteer to take work off your plate, you'll be waiting a long time. That's almost never how it happens.

You need to be proactive about delegating work. Identify the task, identify the right person, and make the ask.

You may tell yourself the following:

• "It's the weekend, I don't want to bother them."
• "They seem busy already."
• "I'll just handle it myself this time."

But what we learned from the webinar’s general counsel speakers is people are typically excited when you give them the opportunity to work on something more substantive and engaging. They like feeling trusted. They appreciate being asked to help, especially by senior lawyers or leadership.

Think back to the first time someone senior asked you for help with an important project. It felt good, right? They trusted you. They valued your contribution. It's the same now when you're the one doing the asking.

Your team wants to develop. They want to learn. They want to take on more responsibility. Don't deprive them of that opportunity because you're worried about "bothering" them.

💡Build immediate capacity by delegating to vetted lawyers with in-house experience, ready to support your team.

The Feedback Loop

After someone completes a delegated assignment, schedule a proper debrief. This is especially important early on when you're just starting to delegate certain types of work to a particular person.

Make these conversations positive and encouraging, even if the work wasn't quite what you needed. You're in teacher mode. Stay in teacher mode.

Start with what went well: "Your analysis of the contract terms was thorough, and you spotted the key issues right away. That was really solid work."

Then address what needs improvement: "The memo could be tighter. Here's where you can cut the unnecessary background. And this section needs more specific citations to support the conclusion."

Most managers worry about giving critical feedback: "They won't like me." "They'll think I'm too harsh." Actually, the opposite is true in Sterling’s experience.

People want to know if they're not meeting expectations. They want to know in real time, not seven months later during a performance review when you suddenly bring up that assignment from February that "wasn't great." Tell them in February so they can improve.

But also ask them for feedback: "How did this process work for you? Were my instructions clear? Did you have enough interaction with me? Were the deadlines realistic? Was my feedback helpful?"

You'll learn something about how to delegate better next time. And you'll signal that you're open to improving, too.

Here's something Sterling did as a general counsel that was incredibly helpful: He told people on his team, "If you see me working on something and you think I should delegate it to you or someone else, tell me."

Because we all get caught in the trap: "I'll just do it this one time. I'll delegate it next time." But next time never comes.

Having team members call you out when they see you doing work that should be delegated is a gift. They're usually right. And it forces you to examine why you're holding onto tasks that should have moved off your plate months ago.

Making Delegation Happen: Your Action Plan 

Here's your delegation checklist to get started:

Before you delegate:

• Identify what you can delegate (track your work for two weeks)
• Determine what you should delegate (repetitive, mastered tasks)
• Find the right person (skills, self-starter, thick skin)
• Commit to investing training time

During the delegation:

• Provide clear instructions and expected results
• Give them the resources they need
• Set realistic deadlines with buffer time
• Schedule early and frequent check-ins
• Review work in progress, not just final product

After the Delegation:

• Give specific, constructive feedback
• Highlight what worked well
• Explain what needs improvement and why
• Ask for their feedback on the process
• Document lessons learned for next time

Remember the Three C's:

• Commit to being a teacher and investing the time

• Communicate clearly and frequently throughout the process

• Coach with patience and constructive feedback

 

💡Discover how leading teams reduce burnout risk and build resilience through flexible models.

The Productivity Payoff 

Delegation can help you be more productive. It can help you get more done during your workday without taking work home every night. It can break you out of that vicious cycle where you're constantly working but never actually getting ahead.

But only if you do it right.

Only about 30% of companies in the US formally teach delegation skills. That's a massive gap between how useful delegation is and how much support you're likely to get learning it, which means you probably need to figure this out on your own.

The good news? You can. Start small. Pick one task, just one, that you're going to delegate. Find the right person. Invest the time to train them properly. Work through the process. Learn from it.

Then do it again. And again.

Over time, you'll build a team of people who can handle work that's currently piling up on your desk. You'll free up time for high-priority tasks. You'll develop the next generation of leaders in your legal department. And you'll finally escape the hamster wheel of thinking you can work your way ahead.

The work will always be there. Client demands will always be there. But how you manage your time and use automation tools, delegation, and management software to work smarter is entirely within your control.

Delegation isn't about being lazy or shirking responsibility. It's about being strategic with your time and developing your team. It's about recognizing that your legal career and work-life balance depend on learning to let go of work that someone else can and should learn to do.

Take the first step. Block time on your calendar two or three weeks out. Use that time to identify one thing you can delegate. Find the right person. Commit to training them well.

That's how you start winning back your time.

Need help clearing a backlog or handling a surge in legal work? Sometimes the best delegation strategy is bringing in experienced external support for a specific project or time period. Axiom's network of in-house lawyers can integrate seamlessly with your team to help you get ahead and stay there.