Seeking inspiration for topics to cover in your thought leadership content? Look no further than your time entries.

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Attorneys and other professional services providers who struggle to consistently produce thought leadership will tell you they don’t write often because they just can’t come up with things to write about.

If you have the same struggle, the solution is right under your nose. Or more specifically, right on your computer screen: your timesheet.

Attorneys’ and other professional services providers’ timesheets are a treasure trove of potential thought leadership topics.

At first glance, they’re full of entries like “Review and revise purchase agreement,” “Call with client regarding indemnification issue,” and “Researched and briefed motion to dismiss response in Smith v. Jones matter.”

Individually, these entries provide little inspiration. But when you zoom out from your daily time entries and look at the work you’ve done over the past few weeks or months, you’re likely to find entries that could lead to thought leadership content your clients and referral sources view as relevant, valuable, and compelling.

I’m not just talking about entries indicating that you spoke with a client about a new court decision, proposed statute, or regulatory agency action. Sure, that’s one potential category of thought leadership, but it’s arguably the least interesting or novel.

For most attorneys and other professional services providers, four patterns in their time entries can inspire standout thought leadership content.

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Same issue, different client

If three different clients reached out over a few weeks or months about the same legal or business issue, something’s happening in their world that similarly situated people and organizations are probably thinking about too.

Maybe it’s three family businesses asking how to hand over the company to the next generation, given recent tax law changes mixed with ongoing economic uncertainty. Maybe it’s three healthcare organizations asking how to prepare a cybersecurity response plan after two recent high-profile data breaches in their industry.

Thought leadership content on these issues answers similar questions from current clients who haven’t yet reached out, allowing you to provide proactive client service and add value to those relationships. Similarly situated prospective clients may also discover this content, form a favorable impression of you, and call to discuss how to handle these issues.

Issues that took longer to resolve than expected

Few attorneys or professional services providers want to admit this publicly, but some client-related issues and tasks take longer to resolve or complete than expected.

Perhaps a deal was supposed to close in four months, but closed in eight. Maybe a litigation phase should have taken nine months, but took eighteen. Perhaps negotiations with a regulatory agency should have lasted two months, but lasted five.

These longer time frames for issues and tasks reflected in your timesheet entries suggest they were more complex than the client (or you 😳) expected. If the complexity surprised a client (and/or you), it would likely surprise a similarly situated current or prospective client, or at least be something they would find interesting to learn about. When writing about these issues and tasks, you’ll create compelling thought leadership if you explain why they may take longer to resolve than expected and what readers can do about it.

Emerging issues

Your timesheet likely reflects questions that weren’t asked before, or haven’t been asked for a while.

Maybe clients have been asking about applying a new regulation or court decision to a settled set of facts that, for the longest time, didn’t need to be thought about or considered. Or maybe the market is handling certain situations or deals differently. Or maybe an emerging technology is changing clients’ operations (cough, cough: AI), and they need guidance on how to implement it and supervise their employees’ use of it.

When your timesheet shows multiple clients seeking guidance on a particular issue that hasn’t been an issue recently or ever before, you’re probably seeing the emergence of a trend—and maybe earlier than your competitors are seeing it or have written about it.

If some of your clients are encountering emerging trends, your similarly situated current and prospective clients likely are too, or will be soon, and will want to hear what you have to say about them.

Janitorial duty

Your timesheet probably has entries on it reflecting when you were on janitorial duty for your clients. In other words, time you spent cleaning up clients’ messes or potential messes.

Did a client agree to a contract with a new provision they didn’t realize carried the power it did?

Did another client face a new HR issue that they should have called you about before taking action?

Did another client launch a business line without realizing that the line appears to be prohibited by current regulations?

Articles about these situations will interest similarly situated current and prospective clients because your guidance can save them money and aggravation by reducing their legal risk and exposure down the road, should they face these situations.

Consider your timesheet a source of future thought leadership content

If you serve similarly situated people or organizations, you’ll likely see patterns emerge in the legal or business issues you handle for them. The knowledge and wisdom you gain from that work will interest other similarly situated current and prospective clients, since they’re only seeing one version of those issues—the one they’re facing.

When you produce thought leadership that reflects that knowledge and wisdom, other people and organizations may hire you to help them, since your thought leadership indicates, implicitly or explicitly, that you’ve seen variations of those issues and helped craft solutions to resolve them.

(But remember that when talking about recurring issues based on your timesheet entries, be careful not to disclose too much information that could reveal privileged and confidential information about your client matters. Talk about the patterns you’re seeing in your timesheets by giving general descriptions of the underlying client matters without getting too specific about the details.)

Timesheets might be the bane of many attorneys’ and other professional services providers’ existence, but they’re often an untapped source for thought leadership topics. If you’re struggling to come up with thought leadership topics, or you’d like a steady stream of them, review your timesheets periodically and look for four patterns:

1. Issues and questions that multiple clients have asked you about;
   
2. Matters, or the issues within matters, that took longer to complete/resolve than you expected;
   
3. Questions and concerns from clients that suggest an emerging issue or trend; and
   
4. Messes you’ve had to clean up for your clients or messes you prevented from happening.
   

I bet you’ll find more thought leadership topics than you have time to write. Pick one. That’s your next thought leadership article.

Your timesheet will guide you toward topics to cover in your thought leadership, but your judgment will guide how you approach them and what you say.