The Firm Playbook: Devising a personal calendar that lets you to be both a lawyer and a leader

By Nermin Jasani

Let’s talk about your calendar. The one that gives you a minor panic attack when you look at it. Your day is packed with consults and your inbox is filled with fires you need to put out.

But where are you setting aside time to be a business owner? To do the CEO work that only you can do?

Your calendar is full of lawyering. But there is no time carved out to think, lead, or make decisions about your business.

And if you’re not doing that work … who is?

When I look at a law firm owner’s calendar, they all have the same issue:

They’re operating as a lawyer with a business attached to their practice. Not as a business owner who happens to practice law.

There’s nothing in their week that forces them into the CEO role.

Inevitably what happens is their team interrupts them all day, they respond to every Slack, email, and “quick question.” Their calendar fills with whatever comes in first – not what’s strategic and will grow the firm. Their priorities get decided by urgency, not importance.

Calendar blocks you’re probably missing

There are three blocks in a calendar that can change everything:

1. Approvals block (a.k.a. office hours)
2. Emergency block
3. Buffer time

Let’s break them down.

1. Approvals block

When you don’t have an approvals block, you are telling your team, “You can access me anytime.”

And they will.

They’ll Slack you. Email you. Walk into your office. And you’ll respond, because you care, and because it’s faster in the moment.

But it’s destroying your focus.

An approvals block fixes this immediately.

Instead of constant interruptions, your team will now think, “I have a question. So I’ll add it to my list and bring it up during the next approvals block.”

This way your team can batch their questions (and also try to problem solve it first, without you). You delegate your decision-making to certain times, and your day stops getting fragmented

This one change alone can give you hours back each week.

2. Emergency block:

You plan for the emergency you already know is coming.

Every practice area has emergency windows, when you can practically expect things to go wrong:

• Criminal/immigration:Mondays (weekend arrests, detentions).
• Family law:Mondays and Fridays (custody issues, missed exchanges).
• Deal Work/M&A:Fridays (everything falls apart at the last minute).

If you look at your calendar now for your practice area, have you built in time for those windows that experience has told you are likely to produce emergencies you’ll have to deal with?

Probably not. And what happens is your team books a consult at 10 a.m. … when everything is on fire and you have an emergency.

Now you’re rescheduling your consult, apologizing or splitting your attention between both.

Lawyers always tell me they need more time. But really, you just need to plan better for these emergencies that you already know are going to happen.

An emergency block is a protected window where chaos is most likely to happen, such as Mondays from 9 a.m. to noon or Fridays from noon to 3 p.m.

Two important things here:

1. You won’t always use it
   Some weeks, nothing blows up. Great, you just got time back.
2. But when something does happen … you’re ready
   You’re not rearranging your entire day to deal with it.
3. Buffer Time

 If your day looks like: Zoom to Zoom to Zoom to Zoom, then you’re going to drain your battery faster than your teenager who has all their social media apps open at once.

Buffer time is what creates space to:

• Prepare for calls
• Think clearly
• Close loops after meetings
• Reset your energy

Without it, everything bleeds into everything else.

Here’s what your buffer should look like:

• Before a call:15 minutes to prep.
• After a call:15 minutes to wrap notes and lay out the next steps.

And yes, this should be built into your calendar tools. Not left to your admin to “remember.” Odds are, they probably won’t and you’ll end up being upset about being in back-to-back consults from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

A good week doesn’t happen by accident. It starts with one simple step: 15 minutes of weekly planning.

Ask yourself: “What must get done this week, no matter what?” Not your entire to-do list. Just the non-negotiables. Then place those into your calendar first.

Then you can add:

• Your approvals blocks
• Your emergency blocks
• Your buffer time

Now your week has shape.

Most law firm owners start their day in their inbox. That’s the problem. You’re starting your day reacting instead of leading.

A well-structured calendar flips that:

You wake up, then check your calendar, and then execute.

When people first come to calendaring, I see a few of the same mistakes.

Mistake No. 1: Turning your calendar into Tetris. Every 15-minute block is filled. Everything is color-coded.It looks pretty. But, it doesn’t work. You’ll ignore it within a week.

Mistake No. 2: Letting your team override everything.

If your team can book over your blocks, then they don’t exist. Write your team up for not following your blocks.

Mistake No. 3: Back-to-back consults.

This is one of the fastest ways to burn out.

At minimum:

• Build in 15 minutes between consults.
• Give yourself time to reset.

This only works if you shift how you see yourself. You are not a lawyer reacting to your inbox. You are a business owner who runs your week.

That’s the difference.

Nermin Jasani, Esq. is the founder of Wildly Successful Law Firm, a consulting firm that helps law firm owners scale from 7 to 8 figures with strategy, structure, and smarter decision-making. After starting her career as a lawyer on Wall Street advising hedge funds, Nermin transitioned into consulting in 2017 to help lawyers solve the business problems law school never prepared them for. Today, she’s known for her direct, data-driven approach that turns ambitious firms into predictable, profitable, and well run businesses. She can be reached at [email protected].