If you are of the “I can do it faster myself” school of delegation, then you are almost certainly losing money and you should rethink how you work.

This is Gimbal’s Tip of the Week, where you get practical, actionable advice you can use right away to start building a more productive and profitable legal practice.

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Effective and responsible delegation is a challenge for many of us. But it’s something we all have to come to terms with and master if we really want to be successful.

To put things in perspective, if the task at hand is something that could be done in one hour by a hundred-dollar-an-hour clerk, and you are a thousand-dollar-an-hour lawyer, you better be able to complete the work in a 10th of the time or you are losing money doing the task yourself.

That’s a really important mindset shift! Sure, the job might take you only 6 minutes, but your 6 minutes of time comes at a much higher cost than many other people’s 6 minutes. Our days are often filled with little tasks that take “just 30 seconds,” but those 30 seconds add up quickly and keep us from focusing on higher value-adding work.

This week’s tip for building a more productive and profitable legal practice: delegate everything that doesn’t absolutely require your particular knowledge or specific skills, no matter how little time you think it will take you.

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Thanks a lot everybody! See you next week.