Newsletter Unsubscribe Friday

Most people don't really understand the CAN-SPAM Act or spam laws.  As long as the header and other information is not misleading in the email, and you provide for an opt-out, you are likely not in violation of most spam laws.  That's how we all get our emails added to newsletter lists, even though we didn't "opt-in."  

I don't know where all fo the newsletters come from.  But today, I searched through my inbox and unsubscrived to every newsletter that I thought was legitimate, although unwanted. 

Another change we made is to stop copying so many internal attorneys in on the email that goes around for clients.  Now, we only copy the attorneys who are involved in a particular project on particular emails.  This has reduced the amount of total emails to the inbox by approximately 85% in our firm.  While it's great to know everything that's going on in all cases, we easily can access the case management system in order to research a particular file. 

 

 

One Lawyer’s Perspective: Getting organized in the morning

There are so many ways to get organized.  Software technology creates all sorts of lists, tasks, categories, tabs, flags, reminders…and on and on and on.  But sometimes it is easy for a lawyer to get lost in all the various tools which allow for organization.  Picking one tool, adding a process and sticking to it is the key.  I’ve tried lots of different organizational techniques.  With 300+ emails hitting my inbox every day, I am one attorney who sometimes wants to wave my arms in the air and say “give up.”   We use Basecamp as our extranet tool.  For the next couple of weeks, I’m going to recommit to Basecamp and simply load up my global to-do list on all projects, open each project that needs attention today as a new tab, and work through the list.    To the extent I see things in my email or other documents which create task categories or tasks, I am simply going to dictate those into the extranet for handling.  Using Basecamp to store, organize and work the relevant tasks of THE day will be my life for the next week.  I’ll let you know how it goes. 

How do you get organized given a major data overload we all experience? 

Blogging in One Hour for Lawyers by Ernie Svenson

For someone that has been blogging actively since 2004 and driven more web content than probably any lawyer or law firm in the world, I love the following series of posts by Ernie the Attorney where some of the top bloggers on the internet answer 5 questions as to why they blog.