coping with email

Living with email. As electronic service delivery takes hold, you’ll need an email strategy. Simon Thomas tells us why.

Text Box: Learning to LIve with E-mail At present, even in the "World of lawyers", who have traditionally been shy on implementing technological advances into their practices, the pace of business transactions has forced those would-be ostriches (heads in sand) to have to adapt, to use e-communications as an everyday mode of working, with clients and other firms alike. However, the legal profession, more than many other businesses, requires a high degree of data retention - virtually all external e-mails from a practice have the potential to be sued upon; - whether due to the advice contained in it, whether an inadvertent misrepresentation of facts following a mistaken client response being transmitted to the other side, or - less frequently but more potentially embarrassing; - due to libellous remarks about someone else (perhaps the opposing party!) The problem of e-storage has therefore become a hot potato, but not one that has fully hit home to practices and their compliance teams - yet. Ad hoc methods of saving e-mails have sprouted up at most forward-thinking (and the City) firms, but as the Courts are now confirming that e-mails are to be taken as one with letters, the present storage approach of the large majority of firms is not currently sustainable. Notwithstanding the compliance and related indemnity insurance potential problems arising, it will become ever more critical that the successful law firm of the future recognises and deals with this issue for its own sake. To not be able to quickly retrieve a client e-mail of advice sent last month, for example because "the e-mail's somewhere in the system in my deleted items", does not reflect well. It is a virtue to be able to respond to a client e-mail request that it will be retrieved from the database in the next few minutes and forwarded to you. One response is modern, efficient and professional, the other sloppy, and not a good impression to give to clients. Inconsistency in method of storage is also a familiar problem, when lawyers have differing approaches to e-storage, for example. For a locum to quickly retrieve an urgent e-mail in the usual fee earner's absence is one such difficulty that can result from this. And again, what will the firm's all important indemnity insurers - on an inspection - make of a hit and miss, inconsistent method of e-storage, bearing in mind the huge increase in e-advice, and ever more reliant client on e-comms? An inability to be able to confidently retrieve important e-advice, quickly (or worst case, even at all) and which could be crucial to defending a negligence claim where the advice was in fact correctly given in the "missing" message(s), could prove disastrous to both reputation, and to the bottom line when losing the claim (not to mention increased insurance premiums). It is the writer's opinion that indemnity insurers will become more and more "hot" in this area, as the now mainstream communications channel of e-mail, moves on to the mainstream expected minimum retrieval system for them; that is, an ability to go to one source, at any time, to view at an instant a chronological series of e-comms on any particular client matter. Outlook for example, is a handy, temporary method for e-storage but over time, storage capacity on a firm's computer servers will dictate that they will need to be shifted on to an appropriate case management system, preferably an efficient, modern one, such as Convey Control (www.conveypro.co.uk). There are several separate strands to learning to live with e-mail, not only the compliance and related insurance ones. Supervision of e-mail also affects risk levels at firms, with the potential to again make – or break – a firm with its clients and insurers dependent in part on this aspect. Clearly not every e-mail can be checked, and restricting a secretary’s, trainee’s, or even fee earner’s ability to e-mail certain clients and organisations, or the types of e-mail that may be sent, could have just as big an impact on the bottom line, as the evil such restrictions are trying to prevent; – efficient, well understood policies must become the norm, it is suggested. Client service level; expected, aspirational, and actual, in the context of e-mail, is another important strand, which will be considered in a future edition, and in particular, what practices should be done as a minimum - and what to aspire as a best practice - for client e-comms. Simon Thomas is a Solicitor in the Real Estate team at Wiggin LLP and is a member of the Law Society's Conveyancing and Land Law Committee