SuccessTips

Part Five of Best Email Practices for Lawyers

Fifth in a Five Part Series

 

Here are the four key points from this email series plus six additional time-saving email practices.

But first, here’s that mind-blowing stat one more time: You spend the equivalent of at least 40 10-hour days doing NOTHING but handling email. If you ponder that long enough, you’ll see that getting serious about improving your email efficiency is perhaps the highest-value time management and practice management activity in which you can engage.

  1. Help readers focus on your message by making subject lines specific, and using prefixes and suffixes to communicate your purpose
  2. Compose succinct text using bullets, headers and short paragraphs
  3. Send fewer, better targeted emails by reducing the use of CC, Reply to All, and Forward
  4. Identify the people with whom you share the most email and discuss these techniques with them
  5. Use rules and subfolders within your Inbox to automatically route and organize messages
  6. Turn offall visual and auditory new mail alerts
  7. Set your program to bring in new mail every 2 or 3 hours instead of “As they arrive”
  8. Unsubscribe from all email lists that you don’t read at least 80% of the time
  9. Spend 5 minutes a week to manually block mail you don’t want (but which slips through your spam filter) by adding them to your “Block Sender” list
  10. Easily view Threaded Conversations to see all the emails in a given discussion grouped in chronological order. (In Outlook, click View > Arrange By > Conversation; then click the square to reveal all the emails under each thread.)

Want help implementing any of the techniques covered in this series? We’ve taught hundreds of attorneys how to implement these and other time-saving email management tactics for themselves with within their firms. Call us for a free consult. 855.508.5000.

Read Part One of Best Email Practices for Lawyers.
Read Part Two of Best Email Practices for Lawyers.
Read Part Three of Best Email Practices for Lawyers.
Read Part Four of Best Email Practices for Lawyers.

About the Author

Bill Jawitz, Law Firm Coach and Consultant

Bill Jawitz has been coaching lawyers to become more profitable and enjoy a higher quality of life since 2002.

He can be reached at bill@sucesstrackesq.com or at 203.806.1300.

I maintain a deep library of hundreds of best-of-breed checklists, templates, guides, and white papers on every aspect of managing a legal practice and law firm, from lawyer marketing plans, to hiring process checklists, to alternative fee engagement letters.

If you need a quick resource, call me. I’ll send you what I have on the topic free of charge with no strings.

Call for a free consultation (203) 806-1300

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