Friday, April 11, 2008

E-mail Productivity for Lawyers by Neen James

Neen James tells attorneys how to be more productive when using e-mail. First, she tells us to “avoid answering email first thing in the morning.” Ah – I need to follow her advice. She also says that if you apply these strategies, you will get back some of the time you are spending on e-mail each day.

Just some of the things Neen tells us to do are:

  • Unsubscribe (I’m great at this one)
  • Use the Out of Office Reply (Ah – this is a life saver)
  • Filter SPAM (But please check your SPAM filter too)
  • Be short and to the point (Yes, brevity is best)
  • Use and e-mail signature (Not having one is my biggest pet peeve!)
  • Be polite (Ever get one of those e-mails with all CAPS and !!!!!!!!!)
  • Spell check (and re-read aloud)
  • Remove distractions (and please turn off the backgrounds…)
  • Delete (But as an attorney, I say, not always….)
  • Avoid BCC (It’ll come back to haunt you)
  • Avoid FYI (Okay – so I need to follow this one more too)

No comments: