These days, in most professionals' working lives there seems to be less of everything: time, budget, resources. And when you ask the entirely reasonable question "well, how am I supposed to get everything done when I have more work than ever and fewer people to do it with/money to spend on it/hours to devote to it?" the answer that typically comes back is "well, you'll just have to work smarter".

Sounds great, doesn't it? The problem is, taken in isolation "working smarter" is just a label: all it tells you is that you need to find a clever way of getting more from whatever resources you have at your disposal. There are obviously many different ways of doing this in practice, but here are my 3 top tips:

There is a lot of talk today about ‘knowledge workers’ and the dependence of our economic growth on the ‘knowledge economy’. But what is a “knowledge worker”: what do they do? And most importantly: are you one, and if so what does this mean for you?

If your day-to-day working life has led to your needing to ponder this question in the first place, then the simple answer is likely to be yes, you are a knowledge worker! But on a more practical level, in our experience knowledge workers will require the capability to do some or all of the following as part of their roles.

(For the purposes of this blog, I am using the word “project” to describe a tranche of work: you can substitute this for case, matter, file etc as is appropriate for you.)

Given the current economic conditions, it’s not surprising that many corporate counsel are looking to bring legal work back in house (some are, rather more catchily, referring to the process as “insourcing” or “backsourcing”) in a bid to save money. Viewed from a purely financial angle, the decision seems like a no-brainer: The Lawyer reports that “magic circle” associates now charge more than partners did in 2005, whilst hourly rates for city law firms are now between £180 and £645 an hour – far above the cost of an hour of legal work undertaken by in house lawyers.