Daylight Savings Time Is About to Rock Your Law Firm’s World!

by Jenny Madison | October 19, 2017

End of Summer Time, End Of Winter TimeDaylight Savings Time is approaching. Most of us embrace the extra hour of sleep we’re about to get in November and dread the hour lost each spring. On the surface, the effects seem like a minor inconvenience—a little lost sleep here, a little shift of daylight there. Harmless, right? It’s not! And here’s why this is important information for PI lawyers.

Studies have shown that there’s a spike in fatal car accidents in the days following the March and November time changes.

  • In March, we lose an hour, and that disrupts sleep patterns, resulting in drowsy drivers and worn out workers. While a rise in car accidents occurs in both spring and fall, the rise in workplace injuries typically happen after the March time change.
  • But when we gain that extra hour of sleep in November, we still see problems. Anticipation of the extra hour on Sunday results in increased fatalities related to drinking and driving and drowsy driving late at night. Also, the sudden darkness during the evening commute might have an effect that lasts for weeks.

Our Data Supports DST Studies

At cj, we diligently track calls and spot performance for our clients. We have years of data available to see if this phenomenon has an observable impact on our clients’ calls. And guess what? It does! After averaging the call volumes of eight client markets to compare the weeks before and after Daylight Savings, our data supports this theory:

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SnipImageAs you can see, with one exception, there is a general surge in calls for the week and/or month immediately after Daylight Savings.

Fall Back

  • On average, the week right after the time change saw a 4% increase in call volume.
  • The four weeks after (minus Thanksgiving holiday) saw an 8% increase.
  • The month prior to DST never had a higher average call volume than the month after.

Spring Forward

  • On average, both the week right after the time change and the 4 weeks after had a 4% increase in call volume.
  • There was only one year (2015) that the 4 weeks after the time-change was lower than the 4 weeks before.

People Savings Time

Our team is already adding content on this topic to the client blogs we maintain. You should do the same. It’s a great blog and social media message of warning to get out to your communities. Using this knowledge to remind others to be careful during the upcoming time change does two things: saves lives and lets people know where to turn should they fall victim to the fall back.

In the meantime, we encourage your firm to get all hands on deck and prep your intake staff for a surge, because the Daylight Savings effect is real.

Analysis provided by Caitlin Zarrella, Data Manager at cj Advertising