Communication time wasters for senior lawyers

In a 2005 McKinsey Global Survey of Business Executives, one of the questions asked how much time the executives spent per week on “e-mails, voice mails, and meetings that are not valuable.”

Thirty nine percent of the executives said one half to one day a week disappeared into such valueless communications while another 16 percent estimated 1 to 2.5 days.

Assuming senior lawyers would be as besieged as these executives, the results should dispirit them. Communication remains imperative, especially to cope with legal complexity, but the sheer volume of it, not to mention the time drain of much of it that is low value, eats away at valuable productive time.