Work-Life Balance: Removing Stress Through Effective Technology to Earn Your Time Back

There are many ways that technology can reduce stress and earn your time back, and there are also many ways that pseudo workflows for new technologies claim to provide these results with no manual actions. When we take a high-level look into these areas, there should be three measurable key components that show a return on time investment through automation, reduction, and machine learning.

So, let’s walk through the 5-step process it takes to review, adjust, and receive the return on your time investment.

Step 1: Identifying the Stressor

The first step of earning your time back is reviewing what is causing the loss of time control, and in turn, how are you utilizing technology when it comes to your workflows.

When we search for new technologies, as humans, we’re often caught by the shiny new toys that incite a market trend. However, these shiny new technologies may not be an actual resolution to your need.

Let’s take GenAi for example, the newest legal technology feature, while it is very impressive what these tools such as eDiscovery on Demand, or Relativity aiR can do – how are you utilizing your current analytics and AI inside of your technology?

Whether it is AI use, workflow adjustment, or data reduction your first step to identifying this requires you to understand your current product. There might already be a thought that you know your product back to front, but this workflow review will help you identify your stressor even as an expert in your product. Once you identify a workflow change make sure that you can test your current procedure vs one leaned in technology.

In my experience with those who have tools with AI or analytics, only 30% of experts truly understand how to make the best use of it.

A fine example of this would be how you’re currently handling early case assessments for document review, are you simply de-duping the global dataset?

Try taking that workflow to a new perspective utilizing ECA analytics not just for de-duping, but to construct the necessary data to review in the database. Are you utilizing features such as hypergraph visualizations for tracking email conversations, or cluster visualizations a feature that groups conceptually similar documents together? If you are not using these for ECA and deduping at a high level, this might be the first step action you can begin to review.

Step 2: Reviewing your Time

Now that we’ve identified the stressor and the technology it’s being caused by there must be a calculation for how much time is being spent resolving this stressor per project.

If we take a linear eDiscovery review workflow for example, we see that this is causing a significant number of time resources to be pulled in to complete the review. After Identifying this there is a plan to move to a technology-assisted review. You will have to run a test; how much faster could this review have been completed by prioritizing technology-assisted review?

It all comes down to a simple formula

Time Accrued = Total Hours Spent / Total Documents Touched

—–Followed by—–

Time Savings = ((T_m – T_t)) / T_m ) x 100

T_m = Time Spent in Manual Workflow | T_t = Time Spent in Technology Workflow

Applying these formulas to whichever technology can be advanced by using more in-depth features.

So, let’s say we spend 10 hours, completing a linear review of 500 documents. You’re accomplishing 50/documents per hour, which is standard for a linear review.

If we take that same data set, and we apply the ECA workflow from step 1; globally deduping at ingestion, utilizing AI visualizations for date frames, sender domains, and communication maps for your key custodian’s talk tracks – This usually leads to a 30% reduction, at a minimum from the database, so let’s redo our formula.

500 documents, at a 30% reduction is 350 documents, then applying the same formula above we land at 7 hours.

Now applying our second formula we can take the ((10hours – 7hours)/ 10hours) x 100 which is equivalent to 30% of your time.

That’s 3 hours or 30% of your time back to spend on strategy, another matter, or in your personal life, wouldn’t that be a great return?

 Over 10 projects you’re receiving almost a week’s work back of time.

Step 3: Analyzing the Change

Now that we have sourced our stressor, and calculated our time formula, how do we further analyze the change(s) that we’ve made?

This step is simple, when analyzing your change in approach you should see somewhat immediate results. Whether it’s 3 hours back per project or 30 minutes, how do we showcase this to clients and ourselves?

Setting a goal is key here, this is a personal decision on what this change might be. This goal could be something as simple as spending more time with my family, or allowing more time for case strategy. Truly the choice is up to you but make sure it is of high enough value for you to analyze and commit to your new process.

Tracking this goal is the secondary key point in this step, it is easy for us to lose sight of our accomplishments as we move into our next project. Personally, I like to keep a thermometer style chart I can fill in with marker, similar to Leslie Knope, to ensure I’m “filling my time bucket” back into my goal of choice.

Step 4: Committing to the New Way

It’s typical to fall back into old habits, in fact, it is our human nature to take the less difficult route most of the time we can. However, what we need to do is ensure we, and potentially your team, are committed to the new approach.

So how do we do this?

The short answer is training, no matter how skilled you are if you don’t understand how to efficiently perform the new approach it may not prove itself of value to you or the team, especially if you become stuck trying to complete the workflow. Imagine someone who has only ever done single-cell entry in Excel suddenly being tasked with curating complex pivot tables, it is just not possible.

Set a time to coordinate with your vendor and commit to a training course for those who need to be involved.

Following your training, ensure that this new workflow is measurable through reporting – how much data is being promoted? How many custodians are removed via time frame? Are these two custodians even communicating?

A simple report through your tool should be able to show you these metrics, and if it does not it may be time to evaluate a new tool to ensure complete success.

Step 5: Measuring Success

The final step of the process is perhaps the most fun step!

At this point, I would suggest you have tried to complete at least 5 projects where you have Identified, Reviewed, Analyzed, and Committed to this process. This also means that your thermometer style chart is reaching its “bulb” or tip.

The writing should be on the wall, or thermometer, but take the same calculation from our Step 2 reviewing your time and apply it across your 5 projects. They are likely to not all be the same, as there are typically no two projects identical, but you should be able to identify the time saved from utilizing this new technology and earning your time back.

Now comes the fun part, instead of just looking at your thermometer, or other trackable item you have curated – take the few minutes to write down what you accomplished during this time back. If it’s spending more time on new projects, showcase an example to your team of how you were able to complete more with less! If it’s spending time with family, take some pictures from that additional time and frame them. There is nothing more motivating than having your accomplishments of earning your time back right in front of you each day.

Conclusion

Using new technology, features, workflows, or any other rocking of the boat can cause fear of change. There are only so many ways you can earn your time back by removing stress through effective technology and if you want to be able to earn your time back through technology your only fear should be continuing your current path.

The loss of your valuable time which can lead to burnout, team dissatisfaction, client budgetary strains, and more can only be solved by a pre-emptive approach, not a reactive one.

Thank you for taking the time to identify, review, analyze, commit, and measure your stress.