February 2001

More Technology Tips for Solo and Small Firm Practitioners

By Reid F. Trautz and Tom Grella

• Draft a written e-mail policy for clients, to clarify the use of e-mail in your attorney-client relationship. In today's fast-moving world of instant communication, clients have come to expect immediate answers to e-mails. (It wasn't like this with the postal service.) Despite the client's expectations, such e-mails may require thought and, possibly, research. If your client understands that you may take several days to respond to an important e-mail, the client is less likely to become impatient or dissatisfied while waiting for you to respond.
• Sign up for totally free e-fax service at www.eFax.com. This site offers a service free of charge: eFax makes it possible to receive faxes and voice mail from any location-on the road, at the office, or working from home. Upon signup, you're assigned a personal fax number and password and become eligible to download free software that converts faxes and mail to a playable sound track or readable form that appears when you open your e-mail at your regular address. (The one drawback is that the assigned number is not local.) The software converts the fax or mail to the readable or audible format of choice.
• Take time to learn MS Powerpoint or CorelPresentations, or designate a person in your office to learn one of these programs. Then create computer presentations for clients and marketing programs for potential clients, among many other uses. Studies show adults learn more from visual presentations.
• Scan all e-mail attachments. Even though you may feel that the source of an email is quite reliable, regularly scan all e-mail attachments with a reliable anti-virus software product such as Norton Anti-Virus or McAfee Anti-Virus. Others' systems can be infected without the knowledge of the owner.
• Consider donating old hardware to charity. With the cost of computers dropping, many lawyers are purchasing new systems and donating their old computers to charitable organizations. Before you do, consult your bar rules and ethics opinions to avoid potential ethics violations-most likely, the hard drives contain confidential client information. Some bars require that you keep client files and/or trust account records for a minimum period of time, often three to five years. Until you're sure you have a hard copy of all this information, save the information contained on the hard drive.

Excerpted, in part, from 50 Hot Technology Tips for Solo and Small Firm Practitioners, a presentation by Reid F. Trautz and Tom Grella during a recent ABA YLD program in Washington, D.C.