I suspect that as much as one third of the mail and email messages you send each week are routine responses or messages. Inquires are answered, new clients information is transmitted, newsletters are mailed. You probably have some of these saved as form letters. You may also store snippets of text you use frequently, ready to copy and paste into your outgoing messages.
If you’re not doing this, now is the time to begin assembling a library of form letters, just as I’m sure you have for pleadings, discovery, and agreements.
If you do use form letters, it’s a good idea to review them to see how you can make them better.
Not only do form letters save the time otherwise spent drafting an original letter, they also save time spent instructing others who respond on your behalf. After all, it’s a lot quicker to tell your assistant to “send letter 3-B” rather than explain what you want them to say (or dictate the letter yourself).
Form letters also reduce mistakes. You won’t forget to tell someone something that is already in your letter.
Form letters also reduce the number of incoming calls seeking additional information or clarification. Clients and prospects will like seeing that you are prepared and thorough.
The first step to improving your form letter library is to make extra copies of every letter and email you send over the next week or two. If you use Evernote, you can send everything into a temporary notebook for this purpose or assign a “form_letters” tag. You might also want to go through your sent email folder for the last few months and selectively forward emails to your Evernote email account. You can do the same with digital copies of letters sent by regular mail.
Also, go through your incoming mail. You may be getting letters sent to you that are (a) answered by phone or in person (i.e., at the consultation or meeting), (b) not being sufficiently answered, or (c) not being answered at all. Send these to your email account, too.
(For more ways to use Evernote in your law practice, check out my Evernote for Lawyers eBook.)
Once you have assembled a sampling of letters and emails, the next step is go through them and ask yourself,
- How often do I send all or part of this information?
- Is there anything in here that I could save and use?
- Is there anything here that could be improved? Expanded? Clarified?
- Is there anything here that could be put into a form letter?
Take the time to create or expand your library of form letters and get in the habit of using them. And every time you dictate an original letter, ask yourself if some or all of it could be added to your library.
If five percent of your current messages today are form letters, and you could increase this to just ten percent, you should see a significant time savings.
