5 attention management tips lawyers can implement today

Paul Unger is a lawyer, speaker, and author in the field of legal technology. He has lectured in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Contact Unger at punger@affinityconsulting.com.

If you get 150 emails, 50 messages, 20 telephone calls, 15 walk-in interruptions, 25 social media notifications, and 50 email or internet curiosity breaks, that totals 310 digital interruptions. Divide that into 480 workday minutes and you have an interruption every 1.5 minutes! 

A 2025 Microsoft study indicated the average American worker is interrupted every two to three minutes — 275 times a day — by meetings, emails, or chats during core work hours.¹ Researchers in a 2007 Microsoft study concluded that it takes about 15 minutes to return back to work following an electronic-based interruption.² 

If lawyers are interrupted every two minutes, and it takes 15 minutes to return back to work they were performing, it can feel almost impossible to get anything done during the workday. This is why you may look at your timesheet some days at 5 p.m. and see only two hours of billable time, but feel like you put in a 14-hour day. 

The reality is we live in an age of information overload. We are constantly connected to the world, from smartphones, social media, 24-hour news networks, tablets, and computers. Unfortunately, this constant information overload may worsen our attention span. 

Between document filing deadlines, meetings with clients, case law research, and other tasks, an interruption every couple of minutes could greatly hinder a lawyer’s ability to effectively practice law and serve their clients. 

One way lawyers can help overcome the inability to focus is by learning attention management skills. Here are five attention management tips you can implement today that are easy, practical, and will make a big impact on your ability to focus and practice law. 

1. Turn off ALL notifications 

Why would you want to give the world a hotline to your brain? Turn all notifications off, and I mean all of them. 

In Microsoft Outlook, email notifications can be turned off by navigating to “File” > “Options” > “Mail” and deselecting the four different methods of notifications when a new message arrives. On an iPhone, go to Settings > Notifications and turn off notifications by app. As a recent Microsoft article notes: “The inbox may still be the front door to work, but too often it opens to a flood of unprioritized chaos.”³ 

You can also schedule “Do Not Disturb” times on your phone and computer to limit the texts, calls, and other notifications you receive. 

2. Practice single-tasking 

Clear your desk and your multiple monitors of information that is not directly relevant to the project you are executing. 

For example, email creates distraction explosions every 30 seconds to five minutes. How can lawyers possibly focus if they see those explosions hit in their inboxes? You should always minimize your email platform on your monitor unless you are batch processing emails or planning upcoming tasks.

Just because you have two or three monitors doesn’t mean you need to have something displayed on them, especially if the information displayed derails your ability to focus on the task in front of you. 

3. Use the Pomodoro method 

Pomodoro is a technique that utilizes a 25-minute timer. You work on a single task, preferably deep-thought work, for 25 minutes and then take a break and do whatever you want for five minutes. In other words, work in intervals. 

The human brain functions well when maintaining attention to a single task for 25 minutes. After 25 minutes, studies show workers begin to lose focus. By giving yourself a five-minute break, you can return to deep-thought legal work for another 25 minutes easily. 

Once you get a little momentum going and are immersed in the project, it becomes a lot easier to make progress on the task at hand. 

This technique can make a huge impact on productivity and help combat procrastination. 

4. Tackle deep-thought work early in the day 

Dive into deep-thought work, writing, or projects in the morning. Our brains function better following quiet time or sleep. In addition, this is theoretically the time before other tasks pop up throughout the day that could derail your attention. This can be one of the most productive times of the day since there could be far fewer interruptions. 

5. Create rituals 

Rituals are small checklists or short rigid schedules designed to execute the same desired tasks during a set period of time. Rituals can help form positive habits and prevent you from taking email or internet curiosity breaks. They also remind us to do things we frequently forget. 

By adding rituals and checklists, lawyers can greatly enhance their ability to focus and do those things that seem to always fall off their radars. 

By implementing these five attention management tips, lawyers can take back control of their workdays, make progress on their to-do lists, and continue to serve their clients in a timely and ethical manner.

Endnotes
1 MICROSOFT, 2025 WORK TREND INDEX ANNUAL REPORT: 2025: THE YEAR THE FRONTIER FIRM IS BORN (April 2025), https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/2025-the-year-the-frontier-firm-is-born.
2 Steve Lohr, Slow down, brave multitasker, and don’t read this in traffic, N.Y. Times (March 25, 2007), https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/business/25multi.html.
3 Breaking down the infinite workday, MICROSOFT (June 17, 2025), https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/breaking-down-infinite-workday.