Smart Calendaring in Lawft: A Calendar System Designed by Lawyers for Lawyers
Walk around your office and tell me if someone is still using a date calculator wheel, has sticky notes with calendar reminders on their monitor, or has a handwritten calendar on their desk that is almost impossible to read. If you see those things in your office, know there is a better way.
Most calendaring software was not designed for law firms’ needs.
Lawft takes a different approach. Designed by lawyers who understand the daily realities of law firm operations, Lawft’s calendar system addresses the specific challenges legal professionals face: calculating rule-based deadlines, tracking statutes of limitations, coordinating across teams and multiple offices, managing court settings, and ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks. Every feature exists because lawyers identified a real need in their practice.
Automated Deadline Calculation
Every lawyer knows the drill: you receive a trial date, then reach for your calendar wheel or paper date calculator to figure out when expert designations are due, when trial briefs must be filed, when pretrial motions are due. You spin the wheel or flip through the calculator, counting backwards according to court rules, double-check your math, and hope you didn’t miscalculate. It’s tedious, time-consuming, and the consequences of getting it wrong are severe.
Lawft’s founders understood this pain point because they lived it. That’s why Lawft’s calendar system automatically calculates and calendars deadlines based on trigger dates and court rules. When you enter a trial date, the system instantly calculates all related deadlines according to the applicable rules and your firm’s procedures.
For example, if your jurisdiction requires expert designations 20 days before trial and trial briefs 15 days before trial, Lawft automations can calculate these dates and add them to your calendar. The system works seamlessly with Lawft’s broader automation capabilities, allowing you to set up rules for any type of deadline calculation based on trigger dates.
Applying the Power of AI to Court Setting Notices
How many times have you received a court order or notice, then manually retyped the date, time, location, and case details into your calendar? It’s redundant work that wastes time and introduces opportunities for transcription errors.
Lawyers designed Lawft to eliminate this redundancy. When you upload a court setting document, Lawft’s AI automatically reads the document and extracts the relevant information. The system opens a create event dialog box pre-populated with the detected details including date, time, court location, and other key information. All you have to do is review the extracted information for accuracy and confirm to add the event to your calendar.
This feature recognizes that lawyers need to process court settings quickly and accurately without manual data entry. It’s a perfect example of how Lawft anticipates the actual workflows attorneys use daily.
Smart Time Finder: Stop Sending “When Are You Available?” Emails
Any attorney who’s tried to coordinate a meeting with multiple lawyers, paralegals, and clients knows the frustration. Email chains stretch across days: “I’m available Tuesday at 2.” “I have court Tuesday.” “What about Wednesday morning?” “I have a deposition.” Meanwhile, the issue that needs discussion remains unresolved.
Lawft’s smart time finder solves this coordination problem by analyzing team member calendars to instantly identify when everyone is available. List the required attendees, and the system shows available meeting times that work for everyone. No email chains. No calendar coordination gymnastics. Just instant visibility into mutual availability.
Statute of Limitations Tracking and Reminders
Ask any malpractice carrier what the most dangerous deadline in legal practice is, and they’ll tell you: statutes of limitations. Miss one, and you face a malpractice claim, potential bar discipline, and the end of the attorney-client relationship.
Lawyers who built Lawft knew that statute of limitations dates need special treatment. That’s why Lawft includes a dedicated statute of limitations calendar that keeps these critical dates visible and separate from routine appointments. The system ensures that limitation periods never get buried under depositions, court appearances, and client meetings.
Conference Room Management
Whether you have a single location and a single conference room, or multiple locations and numerous conference rooms, you have to make sure you are not double-booking your spaces.
Lawft’s calendar includes resource management specifically designed for law firms. Define each conference room at each office location, including capacity, and the system prevents double-booking while helping you select appropriate space. When scheduling meetings, you reserve conference rooms directly through the calendar, ensuring resources are available and matched to your needs.
Firm-Wide Calendar: One Entry, Everyone Informed
How do you communicate firm-wide events like office closures, CLEs, or holiday schedules? Most firms send emails that get buried, post announcements that get ignored, or rely on staff to manually add events to individual calendars.
Lawft’s firm-wide calendar recognizes that law firms need a single source of truth for firm-wide events. Add an event to the firm calendar once, and it automatically appears on every team member’s calendar. Office closures, firm meetings, continuing legal education events, and other firm-wide activities reach everyone without separate communications or manual entries.
Integrated Task Management
A calendar full of appointments doesn’t tell you what your day actually looks like. The discovery deadline, the brief that needs finishing, the client calls that must happen—these tasks don’t appear on traditional calendars, yet they consume the majority of an attorney’s time.
Lawft integrates tasks directly into the calendar because lawyers need to see both scheduled events and work that must be completed. Tasks from your case management system appear on the calendar alongside appointments, showing what work is due, overdue, or upcoming. This integration provides an accurate picture of your actual workload, not just when you’re scheduled to be somewhere.
Practice Area Filtering
Whether you are an attorney who handles multiple practice areas or are an attorney in a firm with multiple practice area, the ability to sort the calendar view by practice area and not just user, comes in incredibly handy.
Lawft allows you to filter calendar views by practice area, showing only the cases and events relevant to your current focus. Need to see only your criminal defense calendar today? Filter to criminal cases. Planning next week’s family law strategy? View only family law matters.
Google Calendar Synchronization
Lawyers don’t sit at their desks all day. They’re in court, at depositions, meeting with clients, and traveling between offices. Checking a calendar shouldn’t require logging into practice management software from a mobile browser.
Lawft syncs with Google Calendar, allowing you to access your schedule through your preferred calendar application on any device. Check your calendar on your phone while walking to court, view it on your desktop while drafting documents, or access it on your tablet during client meetings. All the advanced features and automation remain active in Lawft, while you maintain the convenience of viewing your schedule wherever you work.
This feature acknowledges that modern legal practice happens across multiple devices and locations, not just at a desk.
Flexible Calendar Views
Attorneys need different calendar perspectives for different planning tasks. Strategic capacity planning requires a high-level view, while daily execution requires detail.
Lawft provides multiple calendar views to match how lawyers actually plan their time. The year view shows event density for each day, making it easy to identify busy periods and find openings when planning depositions or trials months in advance. The month view displays specific event information and daily totals for medium-range planning. The weekly view shows everything scheduled for the week ahead for near-term preparation. The day view provides detailed scheduling for daily execution. And the agenda view displays scheduled items in list format for those who prefer linear organization over visual grids.
These viewing options exist because lawyers need to toggle between strategic planning and tactical execution throughout their day.
Seamless Calendar Switching
Attorneys need to see both their own schedule and their team’s availability. Checking whether an associate is available, verifying a paralegal’s court schedule, or coordinating with co-counsel shouldn’t require navigating through multiple screens.
Lawft allows instant switching between your personal calendar and team calendars. This quick access enables efficient coordination without disrupting workflow, recognizing that legal work happens through teams, not just individuals.
The Difference Between Features Built for Lawyers and Features Adapted for Lawyers
The difference between Lawft and other practice management systems comes down to design philosophy. Most software companies build generic calendar systems, then try to adapt them for legal use. Lawft started by asking: what do lawyers actually need from a calendar?
The answer isn’t more colors, more views, or fancier interfaces. Lawyers need automated deadline calculation so they stop counting days manually. They need AI-powered court setting detection so they stop retyping information that already exists in documents. They need statute of limitations tracking that treats these critical dates with appropriate urgency. They need resource management that reflects multi-office operations. They need task integration that shows real workload, not just scheduled appointments.
Every feature in Lawft’s calendar system exists because lawyers identified a real problem in their daily practice and designed a solution. This is what happens when lawyers build software for lawyers: features that actually address the workflows, risks, and challenges of legal practice.
That’s the power of smart calendaring in Lawft. It’s not about having a calendar in your practice management software. It’s about having a calendar system that understands what legal practice actually requires.