County & Municipal Legal Services, LLC

In the first post in our “Organizing Your State’s County Bar” series, we took a look at four different kinds of tools that attorneys can use to organize a state’s county and/or municipal attorneys as a group: Google Groups (and its Yahoo! counterpart, Yahoo! Groups), Basecamp, blogs, and wikis. Here we’re going to discuss email management — how to tame the dreaded inbox beast.

In the last several months, I’ve experienced a couple of attempts of attorney groups to get organized along the lines discussed in the prior post. I admit I was surprised at some of the responses. While most lawyers saw the value in the lists/groups, more than a few emailed back with requests to be removed from the list.

It confused me, until I realized what was behind the response: overwhelm. In an age where well-known lawyers & journalists and even tech bloggers are declaring email bankruptcy, it should come as no surprise, really, that attorneys (who also deal with incoming notices from CM/ECF if they practice in federal court) are also feeling the pinch of overloaded email inboxes.

I believe it’s at least partially due to two main factors: (1) failure to proactively manage email, and (2) inability to divorce one’s self from a feeling of moral obligation with respect to email. A few words about each:

Proactive Management

In far too many cases, we’re letting our inboxes manage us, instead of the other way around. Email, whether at a desktop computer or via the ubiquitous Blackberry or smart phone, simply “is” — much like many things in our work lives. We don’t question it, or how we approach it either individually or organizationally. We simply let it exist as is, and we conform ourselves around its (seeming) demands.

Moral Obligation

The second, and in my book far more insidious, factor behind email overwhelm is the sense of moral obligation it evokes in many. It’s the same impulse that’s behind our strange decision to answer the telephone during dinner, or our mad rush to get to the door before whoever is ringing the bell gets away. We feel compelled to pay attention right then and to respond right there — not necessarily for any intrinsic value that the communication’s underlying meaning holds for us, but simply because someone else picked up the phone and called.

Nine Steps to Taming the Email Beast

These steps are designed to address both of those factors — to help you implement proactive management processes and to help quell any residual sense of moral obligation, or at least to put it in its proper perspective.

You certainly don’t need to try them all at once, but do give each a thorough test, and keep an open mind. These steps help create a whole new way of looking at email for many, and to that extent it might feel weird, alien, or just plain rude. But my experience has been overwhelmingly positive in my own implementation of these steps.

Here’s a quick listing of each rule, then below, I’ll discuss each in more detail.

1. Get a Gmail account for all non-urgent professional & social email..
2. Create strong, descriptive labels in your Gmail settings, or a strong folder architecture in your email client, for each account.
3. Delete nothing. Ever.
4. Turn off ALL auto-alerts to incoming emails.
5. Establish set-in-stone times each day to review your inbox, and never deviate from that schedule.
6. Set up a rule (or filter in Gmail) to archive or file automatically all listserv, bar association, or other non-urgent emails.
7. Process each email once, and correctly.
8. Exercise restraint and good manners in sending your own emails.
9. Aim for zero.
   • Think carefully before you send that email to the group. Does everyone really need to see it? Can you just as easily send it to just one person, and ask them to share it with whoever needs to know?
   • Keep the message short and direct. If you have a few items to discuss, state it up front: “I’d like to mention two points.” Then state your points, succinctly.
   • Watch your “tone.” There are no body language cues or tone of voice hints as to what a person really means in email, and that’s how misunderstandings start. Eliminate ALL sarcasm from email — it just doesn’t play well. Don’t try to joke or tease; in most cases there’s just too much risk it could backfire.
   • Does the message really need to be sent at all? Can you just call the recipient or mention it the next time you see him or her?
   • Tell your recipient when there’s no need for a reply — i.e., when you’re sending information for information’s sake alone and don’t expect a response.

Get a Gmail account for all non-urgent professional & social email

This includes mail from all lists and groups (like those Google groups we’re setting up), as well as those mass group emails from social and charitable organizations we belong to, our kids’ teachers and schools, bar associations and professional groups — everything, in short, that isn’t from a court, a client, or an opposing counsel. Email from those folks, you want funneled into an offline client such as Outlook (for Windows) or Entourage or Mail (for Mac).

The benefits of Gmail are many: more storage space than you’ll ever need, free, ability to have numerous accounts, easily-set-up filters that direct mail where you want it to go, and tracking email in “conversations” rather than separate threads (which makes reading the entire history of an email exchange much easier). But the best and most underused feature of Gmail: the search function. Built on Google’s search algorithm, it will be your life saver if you let it.

Create strong labels or a strong folder architecture for each email account

The single best thing you can do to organize your email is use those labels (in Gmail) or folders (in Outlook — in Mail.app, it’s mailboxes) zealously and well. Make the labels/folder names appropriately descriptive and non-cryptic; you should be able to tell at a glance what goes where. Create an architecture for your folders that isn’t too byzantine; I’d go no further than 2 deep (i.e., I’d create a “Clients” folder and then a folder for each named client within “Clients,” but I wouldn’t go further and create a “Correspondence” and “Opposing Counsel” folder within the named-client folders; if you want to do that, skip the “Clients” folder).

Delete nothing

Stop worrying over “where that email went” — download them to your hard drive. In Gmail, simply archive them. Don’t delete emails. First, you never know when you’ll get that subpoena or FOIA request. Second, you’ll never have to wonder where it is. You’ll KNOW it’s here somewhere! Paired with robust search technology for your computer’s hard drive (and here’s where I really love my Macs and the Spotlight search), you’ll be able to find anything. The trick is to keep them out of your inbox. (See tip #9.)

Turn off ALL auto-alerts to incoming emails

If you do nothing else, do this one: turn off the little “ding” noises or bells or other sounds that play to alert you that “You’ve got mail!” What you want: total, blessed silence, and absolutely nothing popping up on your screen. No distractions whatsoever. In conjunction with the next rule, this alone will save you countless hours over the course of a year.

Establish set times each day to review your inbox, and never deviate from that schedule

Pick two times each day — mine are first thing in the morning, and again at 3:30 PM — to go over your email accounts and process your messages. Don’t check email at any other time. Now, obviously, this is not always possible. You’ll have to reconsider this rule when you’re trying to hash out an agreement via email at the last minute before a county council meeting at 6 PM. But by and large, those times should be rare exceptions. Keep this rule, and the one right before it, and you’ll be amazed how much more in control you feel.

Set up rules and filters to automatically archive/file all non-urgent emails

I belong to a group called Solosez, with over 3,000 members. In any given day, hundreds of messages come in to that particular Gmail account, just from this list. Not a single one goes into my inbox, though, because I’ve set up a filter (the equivalent of Outlook’s rules) that directs all incoming mail with a “To:” field including the Solosez list address to the archives. This reduces the number of messages in my email inbox by huge degrees, and nearly eliminates the possibility I’ll miss something important due to visual clutter.

Be diligent and fastidious in this rule; just make sure you’ve got the right logic specified or you could miss important messages. Make certain, for instance, that if you’re setting up a rule directing mail “From:” a particular email address that ALL email from that address is non-urgent. Use conjunctive logic if you need to in order to finesse your rules and filters (i.e., FROM: and keyword fields used together as parameters for the rule/filter).

Process each email once, and correctly

Here we further address our sense of moral obligation. At one point during the day (or even less often for some lists — I check Solosez mail maybe three times a week on occasion), you’ll either read the message, or mark it read. That’s right — you don’t actually have to read every single email that comes into your inbox! This is a radical thought for many, I realize.

But here’s the perspective that can change your life for the better: Stop thinking of emails as personal visits or telephone calls. They’re not, at least not anymore, if they ever were. Now, they’re like cocktail party chatter — lots of conversations going on at once, and you’re free to flit amongst the groups, drop in, drop out, tune them all out if you need to go attend to something else. This is especially true of listserv emails.

Even if the email is urgent, you can also make use of this step. If you need to take action on the email, set your tasks or calendar reminders right then — don’t delay, which is the digital equivalent of letting your junk mail pile up on the kitchen table.

Exercise restraint and good manners in sending your own emails

Remember the Golden Rule: treat others the way you’d have them treat you. Some specific suggestions on bringing the niceties back to email:

Aim for zero

Strive to keep that inbox completely empty, by moving emails to the appropriate folders for action or archival, and by downloading them off the server into your hard drive. The beauty of a clean inbox, if you’ve never experienced it, will truly inspire you! For more information about this concept, I highly recommend David Allen’s excellent book on productivity, Getting Things Done, without reservation. Not so much another time management system as a definitive and practical guide to true productivity, “GTD” as it’s known by loyal adherents will truly revolutionize the way you approach the subject of — well, getting things done.

Bonus Tip: Lose the Blackberry

I think I just collectively heard a massive scoffing sound coming from the halls of large law firms everywhere… I don’t mean lose it, literally. I mean “divorce it from your hands.” Relegate it back to its true role: a tool, not a lifeline. Which, come to think of it, isn’t bad advice for email generally.