In-House Success = Doing the Right Work, Not All the Work

Deep Dive

A Principle Based Approach: Picking the Right Work at the Right Time

Most in-house legal teams have more work they could do than they can reasonably handle.

For business-minded legal teams, this is even more pronounced. When you understand your company’s goals, you see countless ways legal can drive value beyond the usual contract negotiations, litigation responses, and compliance checks.

But just because you can take on a task doesn’t mean you should.

When colleagues frequently seek your input or you identify valuable but non-urgent legal projects, it’s easy to overextend. Trying to tackle everything leads to burnout, overwhelm, and diminishing returns. More hours, more tasks, but less focus, less energy, and lower-quality work.

The is choosing the right work at the right time.

This issue breaks down five principles and frameworks to help you decide where to spend your time and energy for maximum impact.

There’s no single “right” way to prioritize. But understanding these frameworks will help you make better decisions, protect your bandwidth, and do more of the work that truly moves the needle for your company, your team, and your career.

Let’s dive in.

1. The Pareto Principle: Focus on the 20% That Drives 80% of Impact

Not all legal work is created equal. The Pareto Principle suggests that 80% of your impact comes from just 20% of your efforts, which means choosing the right tasks is critical.

For in-house lawyers, this often means deciding what requires your expertise vs. what can be handled with AI, playbooks, or templates.

NDA reviews are a great example. Yes, they need to be reviewed. But mostly just to make sure they don’t include any crazy provisions (unlimited indemnification for any breach, personal liability for employees, etc.). And it probably doesn’t need to be a lawyer who does that review. In 2025, AI can do this for you. Even if you don’t have the appropriate tool, someone less costly to the company than an in-house lawyer can do it.

The same applies to contract negotiations: spending equal time on every provision slows deals and wastes effort. Instead, prioritize the clauses that matter most, aligning them with company priorities and risk tolerances, and use streamlined approaches for the rest.

Applying this principle isn’t just about efficiency. It’s about maximizing your value by focusing your expertise where it truly moves the needle.

2. Parkinson’s Law: Tasks Take All The Time You Give

Parkinson’s law says that work expands to fill the time allotted to it.

If you could finish a draft in one hour, but give it three, or a negotiation in a week, but allocate two, the task will likely take the longer amount of time to finish.

The practical takeaway here is clear: set tight but realistic deadlines for all of your tasks. This will help ensure you focus on the aspects of the task that actually matter, rather than overspending time on low value areas.

3. Eisenhower Matrix: To-Do List Triage

When your to-do list feels a mile long, the Eisenhower Matrix is a simple but effective way to categorize tasks by urgency and importance, helping you decide what to prioritize, delegate, or eliminate. 

Of course, legal work isn’t always so black and white. A few key considerations for in-house lawyers:

• Delegation includes technology. AI, playbooks, and automation aren’t just for efficiency—they’re essential tools for handling low-risk, high-volume tasks.

• Be cautious about deleting. If something truly isn’t important, it may belong in the “delete” bucket. But if it’s just not important right now or to you, consider a new category: scheduled delegation. Keep track of it, and delegate in the future when the time is right.

The Eisenhower Matrix may not be perfect, but when used thoughtfully, it’s a powerful triage tool to ensure your energy is spent on what truly moves the needle.

4. The Cost of Task-Switching

Jumping around between tasks, or “multi-tasking” (who remembers when “ability to multi-task” was often listed as a job requirement?) may feel productive. But the opposite is true.

Task switching significantly reduces productivity and increases errors. Research shows that every time you switch tasks, your brain must reorient, leading to measurable delays. For example, a 2020 study on multitasking in project-based work revealed that professionals working across multiple tasks suffered noticeable efficiency losses. A 2017 study found that interruptions in complex work led to higher error rates and longer recovery times, especially in detail-oriented fields where accuracy is critical.

For in-house lawyers, these findings highlight a critical point: jumping from task to task as is often asked of us isn’t just tiring. It’s a hidden drain on time and quality. Prioritizing deep, uninterrupted work sessions can dramatically improve efficiency and reduce mistakes.

5. The Law of Diminishing Returns: More Hours Doesn’t Always Mean More Impact

The law of diminishing marginal returns is an economic principle, but it applies to legal work too. It states that after a certain point, adding more of a single input (like labor) leads to declining marginal output. Meaning more effort doesn’t necessarily mean more results.

For in-house lawyers, this translates to a harsh reality: after a certain number of hours worked, each additional hour becomes less valuable than the last. Your focus fades, decision-making slows, and errors creep in—not because you aren’t working hard, but because your cognitive capacity is stretched too thin. One study even suggested that working beyond 50 hours per week leads to a sharp drop in productivity, and work beyond 55 hours is essentially useless.

If you apply any of these principles to prioritizing your own work, let me know how it goes by hitting reply!