How Lawyers Work: Aaron Street, CEO of Lawyerist

In this week’s edition of How Lawyers Work, we talked to Aaron Street, the co-founder and CEO of Lawyerist.com. Aaron serves on the ABA’s Legal Technology Resource Center board as well as the board of the Hennepin County Bar Association in Minneapolis and on the State Assembly of the Minnesota State Bar Association.

You can follow Aaron on LinkedIn and Twitter.

What apps or tools are essential to your daily workflow?

The handful of core software we use to run Lawyerist include:

• WordPress to run our site;
• Trello for team project management;
• Slack for team communications;
• HubSpot to manage our contacts, scheduling, sales, and marketing;
• Dashlane for password management;
• Google Suite for email, calendar, and document management; and
• Xero for our bookkeeping and accounting.

I personally also use:

• Wunderlist for task management;
• Feedly and Pocket to find, read, and share internet content;
• Overcast to listen to podcasts;
• Evernote to organize my ideas, notes, and reference materials; and
• Waze to figure out where to go.

My tools are a mix of desktop computer (a 13” MacBook Pro with a monitor), iPhone 7 Plus, 9.7” iPad Pro with Pencil, and Moleskine notebook with a Lamy Safari fountain pen.

What does your workspace look like?

I have a simple, clutter-free desk with a writing area, a computer, and our setup to record the Lawyerist Podcast. Though I write down notes and ideas all day in my notebook and on scratch paper, I capture everything in Wunderlist and Evernote and shred all loose paper every day, so there’s never any mess at the end of the day.

We moved into this office building in December, after running Lawyerist from a variety of other places, and just moved into this particular office a few weeks ago. The best thing about it is the view of Target Field home plate, just in time for the Minnesota Twins home opener next week.

How do you keep track of your calendars/deadlines?

I use Google Calendar for my work and personal calendars. I’m convinced by the Deep Work suggestion to schedule every minute of your day (ie, block out your important projects and schedule and batch your email, social media, and administrative tasks), but so far I don’t actually do that.

I use the call/meeting scheduling tools built into HubSpot so people can schedule time on my calendar without me needing to go back and forth with them. Before implementing HubSpot, I used the same feature in Calendly, which is great. If I’m scheduling a group meeting, I usually use Doodle.

I manage my personal and work tasks in Wunderlist, which I have structured into contextual lists (@errand, @home, @phone, @computer, @work, etc.) to basically mirror the core ideas of Getting Things Done.

I use Gmail’s Inbox email app and it’s archive/snooze features constantly, so that I’m almost always at inbox zero.

What’s your coffee service setup? (Other beverages are fine, of course, but you should really be serving coffee!)

As Sam mentioned in his profile, we have an office in Industrious Minneapolis and the welcome area here has lots of coffee, tea, soda, La Croix, snacks, and breakfast. It’s the best.

What is one thing that you listen to/read/watch that everyone should?

One thing? That’s just silly.

I’m an insatiable content consumer. It’s actually a problem.

I currently subscribe to two newspapers, a couple dozen magazines, 17 podcasts, 100+ blogs in Feedly, monthly Audible audiobooks, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu, HBO Now, Pandora, Amazon Music, plus have hundreds and hundreds of print books.

OK, one thing: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.

What’s your favorite local place to network or work solo?

I do most of my networking at whichever coffee place is halfway between me and the person I’m meeting with, which is almost always a Starbucks or Caribou, but if it’s convenient then Five Watt Coffee.

I’m most productive working from my desk at my office, but if I’m not coming in I love working from my sun room at home.

What are three things you do without fail every day?

I wake up at 5:45 each morning, do 10 minutes of yoga, 10 minutes of Headspace meditation, make a pot of coffee, and read the print edition of the Wall Street Journal.

Who else would you like to see answer these questions?

ABA President Linda Klein.

How Lawyers Work: Aaron Street, CEO of Lawyerist was originally published on Lawyerist.com.