James W. Martin Business Planning Law Blog on Lawyers.com

I used to think email was a problem. Until about a month ago. Now I love it. The problem was what to do with it. I used to treat email like any other correspondence. When law offices first starting email in the 1990s, I would print it on paper, drop it in the wooden box of incoming mail on my desk, and deal with it when I dealt with that day’s U.S. Mail. That worked for a while, but email usage has become widespread, voluminous and constant.  Printing to paper could not keep up with the onslaught.  One month I had 800 emails on just one client’s case. I needed an email filing solution. And I found one, right there on my computer, right under my nose, right there under my typing finger tips.  It’s called Microsoft Outlook. That’s right. The very same software that brings me the email is now my email filing solution and records management solution.