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Checking checklist apps off your list of checklists
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: April 3, 2015
Checklists are good—from grocery shopping, to legal writing, to new client intake sheets, checklists are an indispensable facet of the office (and life). They reduce complexity, alleviate the pressure on memory, and allow easy task sharing, among other benefits.
According to one writer, Atul Gawande, checklists, “checklists seem able to defend anyone, even the experienced, against failure in many more tasks than we realized. They provide a kind of cognitive net. They catch mental flaws inherent in all of us — flaws of memory and attention and thoroughness. And because they do, they raise wide, unexpected possibilities.”
The ABA has, in fact, published a book called Checklists for Lawyers.
You may also want to take a look at the 16-page Legal Writer’s Checklist Manifesto.
Here are a few law-oriented checklist apps:
Practical Law from Thomson, offers checklists in various practice areas (bankruptcy, antitrust, tax, labor and employment, and more), as well as tables, charts, timelines, and flowcharts, all geared specifically to law practice. Free trial available. Includes training, technical support, and a dedicated publication.
PracticePro by the Lawyer’s Professional Indemnity Company (LAWPRO) has all kinds of one-off checklists, like Giving Independent Legal Advice, Sitting on a Non-Profit Board, Employee Departure Checklist, and lots of other goodies, as well as standard checklists by practice area.
Contract Checklists looks like it has virtually every kind of contract you could think of on it, including catering services agreements ,patent licenses, executive employment agreements, and some more that you may actually use.
Practice Checklists Manual is from British Columbia, so, if you don’t practice law in Canada, it may not be that useful, but one set of checklists that this site does have has to do with running a law office. And, of course, if you do any work in Canada, you can save a lot of time and research by accessing this cite.
iWrite Legal was covered in this column before. It’s a legal writing tool that includes checklists.
Do you blog? There is a twelve-point blog post checklist, which includes formatting, editing, first drafting, etc.
Clean your task-oriented mind. Check the checklist.