By OBA MAP Director Jim Calloway

Among those who prefer to work from home, missing time-wasting meetings is often cited as a positive. Back at the office, many mid-level managers view meetings as the way they supervise the work, so that is in conflict.

Best practices for better meetings include:

• Always circulate an agenda in advance that includes the decisions that need to be made. (“In advance” does not mean 15 minutes before the meeting.)
• Designating the time the meeting will conclude is critical, as is starting the meeting no more than two minutes after the scheduled time. This occasionally may be challenging in a law office environment., but chronic tardiness demonstrates a disregard for the schedule of others.
• The person running the meeting should encourage everyone to be heard.
• Everyone should be reminded that getting through the agenda may get the meeting over sooner.
• Hybrid meetings, where some are attending by videoconference, are a particular challenge. The chair may need to acknowledge remote attendees, encourage them to speak up if they cannot hear and ensure they have an opportunity to speak.

Even though it’s likely most lawyers have never tried it, Outlook does provide a tool to let you avoid meetings when simple decisions need to be made. "Use voting buttons in messages" is a step-by-step guide from Microsoft on how to use email to poll others. You can set up the poll with "Yes/No" or "Yes/No/Maybe." When there are only a few decisions to be made, this may be a great method to turn a meeting into an email. And if someone believes it needs further discussion, they should know how to "Reply all."