Electronic mail was not originally designed to be much more than a simple message delivery technology. Yet in just a few years it has become the core application for almost every attorney and business client. Most lawyers who never previously touched a computer now find e-mail indispensable to their business, practice and personal life. Yet ironically, the very advantages that make e-mail indispensable also make it problematic.

Problem 1: Spam from the Outside
The biggest problem caused by the explosive growth of e-messaging is the unrelenting inflow of unsolicited, unneeded and unresolved messages and scattered information. Rather than streamline communication and speed workflow, as it was intended, the e-mail message glut can distract users and reduce productivity. Ask any user these days, and he or she will tell you it’s getting harder and harder to differentiate important messages from the junk.

Problem 2: Spam from Within
Who or what is the cause of the problem? Ironically, it’s not just them—it’s us. While it’s true that spam from outside our firms accounts for the highest volume of e-mail message clutter, the second highest source of unwanted messages is from trusted internal e-mail. In fact, a recent study by NFI Research reports the next three highest sources of unwanted e-mail messages are copies, unnecessary replies and repetitive or misdirected memos—all from internal sources.

Unnecessary internal e-mail likely costs law firms more lost time than all the piles of external spam combined. The Gartner Group estimates that these messages consume 30 percent of employee e-messaging time. In a law firm, the drag on lawyer productivity can be significant. When an attorney receives external spam, it’s irritating, but it just takes a second to delete it or filter it and move on. But when that same attorney receives a message from a colleague without context or responsibility, it’s more than irritating. Courtesy, curiosity, and professional diligence compel you to open, identify and quantify the value of every message—Is it chat or business? To what ruling does she refer? Does it identify a new opportunity? Does it change my advice to clients? Should I save this—yet doing so wastes time and frays nerves.

Problem 3: Isolation from the Enterprise
E-mail has surpassed all other information systems to become the center of daily attorney work. However, in bypassing the major enterprise systems, this communication tool has turned traditional information management on its head. Many law firms simply have not yet adjusted.

Mail folders are overflowing with scattered client and case correspondence, work product and knowledge exchanges that have accumulated from past and present work. Key information is usually uncategorized and inaccessible to the client team or practice group. If team members are sent copies, there are probably duplicates sitting in each person’s mailbox. Since attorneys have little time to organize messages after files close, the net effect is overflow, duplication, inconsistent categorization and clutter. This represents a regression in enterprise information management and does not leverage the collective strength and resources of the firm. Rather, it imposes additional information management burdens on the individual.

Unless the valuable information buried in personal messages is reintegrated into the enterprise information and knowledge processes, there is little likelihood

of stemming the tide of e-mail message clutter. More importantly, as e-mail systems become more unmanageable, other expensive law firm information systems will become incomplete and irrelevant.

Solution: E-Mail Message Management
E-mail does not have the capabilities of law firm information management, case management, document management or knowledge management system—though it does transport that information. So law firms must find more effective means to filter, manage and control the rising tide of e-mail message clutter without disrupting the flow of business and practice. As a first step, law firms can reduce the volume of unnecessary internal messages by establishing e-mail distribution standards and by training people to communicate efficiently and effectively within the firm. (Just because you can send your memo to the whole firm, doesn’t mean you should.) Some firms have had success devising action codes to designate importance or responsibility for action (e.g., NRR: no response required; ACT: Alert Client Today; and RAL: Reply at Leisure). These initiatives may help lighten the load, but they do not solve the core problem.

Law firms need to devise a new strategy to accommodate the e-mail-centric law office, not only to reduce clutter, but also to restore enterprise value. Like it or not, if e-mail is where the lawyers are; it must be part of that enterprise solution. Each firm must find creative ways to extract, siphon or channel important content from e-mail message folders to their enterprise systems and databases where it can be efficiently stored, categorized and leveraged without disrupting the attorney’s practice.

This may be as simple as designating a person in each practice group to receive, classify and post all relevant e-mail messages to a practice group collaboration area, or establishing a process for filing e-mail messages as documents.

Ultimately, the firm will have to consider using an automated intelligent broker service to anchor e-mail information in law firm enterprise systems while “pushing” notification of new postings to lawyer subscribers (on a per item, daily or weekly digest basis).

The most effective solutions will be built around e-messaging to retain its strength as a transport and notification system while channeling important information to enterprise information management systems that can better manage and leverage the firm’s intellectual assets. Any process that requires the lawyer to leave e-mail to do work elsewhere will likely fail.

Channeling key information to reliable, categorized enterprise collaboration areas relieves the recipient of the time and stress of information management. When an attorney receives a notification, he or she knows the information is already safely stored for easy reference. By avoiding the unnecessary distribution of copies, the process clears mountains of information from lawyer mailboxes and eliminates the proliferation of dozens of copies to people who don’t really need it.

Screen It. Reduce It. Channel It.
As long as e-mail remains a personal information management system, there will continue to be the need to screen and reduce the growing volume of external and internal spam that is clogging law firm mailboxes. By integrating e-mail message information with the enterprise system, great productivity gains can be made—by removing message clutter and leveraging the key information assets of the organization, individual attorneys and their firms alike can greatly benefit.

About our author...

Dan C. Felean is a principal and senior consultant at PensEra Knowledge Technologies, a developer of web-based knowledge tools for law firms and corporate law departments. He has more than 25 years experience in law and technology, both as a practicing attorney and as a consultant to law firms and law departments. He can be reached at danf@pensera.com.