Mistakes Lawyers Make With Outlook

Transcription

1 Mistakes Lawyers Make With Outlook Over the last decade I ve had plenty of chances to observe lawyers in action with Outlook and I ve been able to shake my head and chuckle at the mistakes they ve made with it. Let s spend this time together talking about those mistakes so you can stop making them. Remember, I m not laughing at you, I m laughing towards you. Deleted Items Storage You have 21,453 items in your deleted items folder. I observed. Why don t you empty that out? Oh, no! I can t empty it- there might be important things in there! replied the attorney. If I had a nickel for every time a lawyer has told me they can t empty their deleted items folder because there are, or might be, important things in it, I would have a lot of nickels. You don t store important client documents in your trash can do you? Then don t store important s or other items in your Deleted Items folder. The Deleted Items folder is the Outlook equivalent of your trash can. It s a place where stuff goes that you want to toss out and, until the cleaning crew comes along and dumps it, you could still reach in there and pluck back the document that inadvertently fell in. Just like your trash can, it s important that your Deleted Items folder get emptied out from time to time. Otherwise, items in there consume valuable space in your message store. Tricks of the Pros Use AutoArchive to keep your Deleted Items folder manageable. If you right-click the Deleted Items folder and choose Properties you can go to the AutoArchive tab and have AutoArchive clean the folder automatically. Just specify how many weeks or months you want to retain items and set the action for permanently delete. If you have an Exchange Server ask your Exchange administrator to enable Deleted Item Retention so that in the event you do accidentally delete and then subsequently purge an important item you can still recover it. Be careful, though, if Delete doesn t really mean Delete, that can have implications in ediscovery. To empty the Deleted Items folder, just click Tools Empty Deleted Items folder. Misaddressing Messages One of the advantages of is how easy it is to just address something and click Send. You can send to individual accounts within your firm, to distribution lists or to accounts out in the world all with just a few clicks. However, this ease of use means that users can very easily mis-address a message and send that message somewhere it was never intended to go.

2 You want to send an to your associate Judy Lawrence about tactics for petitioning for a change of venue because you think Judge Tucker will be unsympathetic to your client. You enter your message, type Jud in the TO field, and accept the first autosuggested address. You click send just a split second before you realize that the address Outlook has autosuggested was judgetucker@courts.gov. The lesson here is to very carefully check your addressing before you send. If this is a problem you just don t seem to be able to get past then you might want to consider implementing a delayed send rule in Outlook. How? Outlook's Rules Wizard to the rescue. These instructions are for Outlook 2007, but you can do substantially the same thing in all relatively modern versions of Outlook. We're going to create a rule that delays actually sending a message for 3 minutes after you actually click send. That gives you time to sip your refreshing beverage, take a deep breath and reflect upon what you just sent. And, if better judgement overtakes you, delete that message before it sends. First step, start the Rules Wizard. You'll find it under Tools Rules and Alerts. Click "New Rule". At the bottom of the dialog box that results you'll see "Start from a blank rule" and you'll want to choose "Check messages after sending". Click next. Uncheck any and all of the conditions then click Next. Outlook will warn you that this is going to be applied to every message you send, just click "Yes" (we'll add an exception that sends some messages immediately in a moment). In the actions box you want to click the last box on the list: "defer delivery by a number of minutes." Once that's selected look down at the rule description (bottom of the dialog) and click the link that says "a number of". You'll get the Deferred Delivery dialog box where you can set the number of minutes you want to defer by. I usually set it to "3" but you can pick anything you like. Then click OK. Notice that the Rule Description at the bottom now reflects your choice. Before you proceed you should also check the box for "Stop Processing More Rules". That's just good practice unless you have additional rules that have running on messages you send (I'm willing to bet that you don't). If you want to change the delay duration later, just click the link (which is now the number) and you'll get the Deferred Delivery dialog box again so you can make changes.

3 Click next. You'll get the Exceptions dialog box. Now...there may be certain messages that you're sure you do NOT want to defer. They're hot and they need to go now. There are a couple of ways you can do this. The one I recommend is to check the box marked "except if it is marked as importance". Then in the rule description at the bottom click the link "importance" and in the Importance dialog box set the exception for "High" importance messages. What that does is that if you have a message that really needs to go now, and you're sure it's ready to go, you can set the message importance to "High" and the rule will let that message go out immediately, without delay. Be careful with this one...it may be that you're tempted to flag those angry rants as "Important" because in the heat of the moment they feel important but that would defeat the whole purpose of this rule. You can also use a category. Create a category that you want to use to flag a message as "Send Now". You can do that by going to Edit Categorize All Categories. Click "New" and add the new category. TIP: I wouldn't name that category "Get around the dummy filter" or "S**t I really want to say". Keep in mind that it's possible your recipient will be able to see that category on the received message. Name it something cryptic and innocuous like "SN" (for Send Now). In your rule when you're setting your exceptions instead of (or in addition to) the High Importance exception set an exception for "Except if assigned to SN category". Rule exceptions are always "Or" exceptions so if EITHER criteria is met the exception is met. When you've got your exceptions defined click Next. Last step. Here Outlook is asking you to confirm your rule, give it a name, and turn it on. You can read the text of your rule pretty clearly and it should read essentially as mine does on the left. Click "Finish" and then click "OK" to close the Rules Wizard dialog box.

4 Using The Rule Using this rule is as simple as can be, all you have to do is compose and send just like you always do. When you click "Send" your message will appear to send...but it will actually sit in your Outbox for the duration you specified before it goes. If you decide to stop it, just open the Outbox, select the message you want to cancel, and delete it. If you want to send the message but edit it first, drag and drop the message from the Outbox to your Drafts folder and then open it from there, edit and resend. Yes, it will delay for another 3 minutes as if it were new. If you want a message to go immediately either flag the message as "High Importance" or you can click the dialog launcher on the Options group and set the category to your "SN" category. The dialog launcher is the little "box-arrow" icon at the very bottom right corner of the options group. Note that if you have messages in the Outbox when you go to exit Outlook, Outlook is going to prompt you whether you want to send immediately or exit without sending. Your call - I would generally just send immediately if you're feeling confident in those messages you sent in the last 3 minutes. Tasks on the Calendar In previous versions of Outlook, the tasks folder was only accessible as a separate folder or as a Tasks Pane alongside the calendar. However, the days on the Task Pane didn t necessarily relate to the calendar days displayed. Users wanted to be able to look at a date on the calendar and see all of their appointments AND tasks due on that date in a single, easy, interface. Their solution was to add Tasks to the calendar, frequently as All Day Appointments. Unfortunately, that s not really how the Calendar is intended to be used. If your task has a particular date/time element to it, such as Call Judge at 10AM on Friday then it makes sense to schedule it as an appointment. If it s just a To-Do item with a due date (but not time) such as forward accident scene photos to insurance adjuster then it makes more sense to keep it as a Task instead of an appointment. With Outlook 2007 and 2010, Microsoft has placed the tasks on their own bar underneath the calendar called the Daily Task List. This should alleviate the issue of not seeing the tasks on the same day as the appointments and hopefully will steer people back to using Tasks as intended. Many Are The Outlook Windows

5 Every time you double-click an item it opens a new inspector window. If you don t close that item -- or Outlook doesn t -- when you re done with it, those inspector windows will tend to accumulate. The more common thing I see, however, is attorneys who repeatedly open Outlook instances because they have minimized it or opened other applications over it and don t realize that it s still running. There is a time and place for multiple Outlook windows but too often they get away from the user. Be aware of how many Outlook windows are running (you can see them on the Task Bar) and close any that aren t in use. Every open window consumes resources. If you don t see Outlook on the screen, check the Task Bar to see if it s open but minimized or look for the Outlook icon on the system tray. Remember that if you start Outlook from the Quick Launch bar (next to the Start button typically), you launch a new instance of Outlook. Printing This is a mistake I usually see older attorneys make. These attorneys are more comfortable working with paper and don t feel that electronic records are viable. While it s perfectly o.k. to print the occasional , I sometimes see attorneys who insist upon printing and filing every they receive. This is a needless waste of paper and storage space. Instead store your s in folders, print only key messages, and archive those s into.pst or.pdf files which you can burn onto CDs to include with the client or matter file. Where s My Toolbar? In Outlook 2007 or earlier, right-click on the toolbar or menu bar in Outlook. You ll get a context menu you may not remember seeing before. This context menu lets you turn on or off the toolbars. It s easy for folks who are awkward with the mouse to try and left-click on a menu bar or toolbar button but fat finger the mouse and accidentally click the right button at the same time. The context menu appears and they unintentionally left-click on it un-checking one or more of the toolbars in the process. I ve seen it happen lots of times. Recycling is Good Not only for the Earth but also for your resource usage. If you right-click the Quick Launch shortcut you use to start Outlook and choose Properties, you should see the Target field which shows what the shortcut is pointing to. If it isn t already there add the /recycle (without the quotes) switch to the end of the line so that if Outlook is already open the shortcut won t open a new instance. The remedy is simple: right-click that toolbar again and re-check the missing bar(s).

6 We don t see that in Outlook 2010 because in Outlook 2010 the Ribbon has replaced the menu bar and toolbars throughout and it s much more difficult, by design, to mess with the location and content of the Ribbon. You can probably guess why. Where Are My Messages? Views are great things that can help you see just the items you want in just the way you want. If you re not careful though, they can also hide things you want. From time to time, I get a call from a user who says Hey, all of my messages older than last week are gone! or Every time I open and read a message, when I go back to my Inbox it s been deleted! While it s possible that the user is accidentally deleting those messages more likely is that they have inadvertently turned on a view of their Inbox that are hiding their messages. The Last Seven Days view is going to hide all older than the last week while the Unread Mail view is going to hide messages that have been marked as read. The messages are still there, they ve just been hidden. Change your view back to Messages and you should see everything. In Outlook 2007 and earlier click View Current View to see what you re currently set to. In Outlook 2010 go to the View tab of the Ribbon and click the Change View button. Summary There are several common mistakes that I see people make with Outlook. Most of them involve the storage and viewing of items and most of them can be avoided with just a little careful thought. Avoiding these mistakes can help keep you more productive.