When I opened up shop in 1983, my second big decision was stationery. Cranes Crest or Cranes Crest Laid? Engraved or not? The gravitas of a lawyer was judged by the weight of his stationery. It was a first impression thing, when all you knew about someone you had yet to meet was the quality of his letterhead. When it came to the allocation of scarce resources, letterhead was something no self-respecting lawyer skimped on.
Does anyone still buy letterhead? Would any new practitioner fret over whether engraving was worth its princely cost? Heck, how many letters are sent by snail mail today anyway?
Dan Hull, who has long made the point that an email thank you note is the clearest indication of a bad upbringing, has turned his attention to the use of email as a substitute for communication.
Are you typing or lawyering? Is either one of them working for you? I receive about 100 non-spam e-mails a day. I write about one third that many, most as replies. Usually short ones. They are often soulless, and easy to misunderstand, even when I try to be precise.
The ones I get back are often worse. The truth: most lawyers just can’t write. When they write, they “talk to themselves”–like mental patients do rocking back and forth. Typing it themselves makes all that more of a problem.
Folks, the electronic toys we have were supposed to be helping tools–not be the main event. Do we appreciate the way e-mail, search engines and social media (yes, including blogging) often degrade and dumb down the complexity of hard problems in this world? Has all this made us smarter and better? Or are we just lemmings, cattle and sheep–lulled into thinking we must be doing good work if these new tools are so amazing? Is Google–how many impulses, instincts, synapses does that dude have?–more inspiring and useful than the wonderfully storied brain of that lawyer next door?
As another tool in the box, email is fabulous. But if you pull out the email and the box is empty, you’ve got a problem. Back when many lawyers refused to use email, viewing it as a fad soon to pass and beneath their dignity, there were voices in the dark saying that email was both here to stay, and the wave of the future. They were right, with a vengeance.
But the Slackoisie have taken email to an undeserved height, challenged only by texting. It is incapable of capturing the tone, the soul, of a missive on engraved letterhead. It’s brevity often leads to misapprehension of attitude and tone. It’s lack of spelling, grammar and syntax compels one to jump to the conclusion that the sender is suffers from a severe intellectual deficit. But most importantly, it frequently fails to serve its communicative purpose.
Yesterday, I wrote about what an email address says about a person, after being informed that my old email address, sufficient at the time to convey a seriousness of purpose, was now horribly de classé under the current regime. My response was that I’m sticking to my guns, awaiting its return when vintage is cool again. After all, I’ve kept my doubleknit leisure suits in my closet just in case.
Sure, email is faster and easier than writing a letter, putting a stamp on it and taking it to the mailbox (that’s the oddly shaped blue boxy-thing on the street corner). But life isn’t always about faster and easier. Sometimes, it’s about better. And better often takes more effort.
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Scott –
I was with you there until the end. In the end an email is just a letter. It is hard to get across all of the subtleties of communication in the written word.
That failure of communication is even greater when you turn on the immediacy of email and the tiny screen of a blackberry that the lawyer is likely using.
A letter adds some gravity to the communication. We get so few these days.
I was hoping that you were going to end up with using a phone instead of email. The human voice is better communication tools in many instances.
It also does not create that “smoking gun” that gets found during e-discovery, getting you into trouble.
My experience has been that clients seem to think time spent by an attorney drafting a letter is worthwhile, whereas they bitch and moan about bills for e-mails and telephone calls. What were you doing that whole time? vs. Man, that letter you sent that guy was perfect.
I wasn’t ignoring actual human to human contact, whether by phone or (gasp) in person. Quite the contrary. But it’s also different than written communication, the subject of my post. I view email as a writing, although many use it as if it were a phone call substitute.
But an email is hardly “just a letter.” It’s nothing like a letter. And it’s nothing like a telephone call.
Email has its definite place, and can be an extremely useful tool. It’s just not a substitute for a letter, when appropriate, or actual human to human contact, when appropriate. Not even close.
I find the problem less with telephone calls than with emails, which people perceive as taking up 12 seconds of time but charged at 6 minutes minimum. Then again, since I rarely bill hourly, I’ll take as long as I please and no one minds.
“Does anyone still buy letterhead?” – I avoiding sending paper letters. Why bother following up a pdf copy of a letter with a paper copy if the person on the other end is going to just scan it. Just so they can see your letterhead? If they are impressed with your letterhead, they got problems. (Sort of the reverse of people being unimpressed with your email address.)
In fact, letters (pdf or paper) on the whole..rarely useful, why not just send an email. Of course, if you are sending a thank you note, you may want to send a paper note.
While I sit here in the Orlando airport for 3 1/2 hours because Southwest Airlines told me to go to the gate and get the earlier flight only to have the gate agent say they wouldn’t open the door, I thought I’d respond.
There are 2 issues here. One, is speed, and the other, is the “green” movement. Venkat is right. When a civil lawyer emails me a letter, I cannot understand why they follow it up on paper (except to “get” me” if I claim I “never received it” like all their scummy civil colleagues do every day.)
Additionally, if a client or other lawyer is satisfied communicating through email, I’m fine with that. the issue is the communication, period, not the raised letterhead that evidences an “established” lawyer.
Second, and this is my peeve, people can’t wait. I have personal stationary (cards) that I use to send thank you’s. However, I cannot tell you how many times I receive something from someone – a gift, a case referral, send the card, but before they receive it I get an email – “you get the thing I sent you?”
So, many times I resort to email in order to avoid the impatient.
Thank you for helping me pass the time here all due to the inflexibility of Southwest Airlines
I cannot tell you how happy I am that Simple Justice exists for you to kill time between important things in your life. I am here to help you pass time. As for your issues with Southwest Airlines, might I suggest you consider a music video posted on youtube? It seems to be quite effective.
Well, we struggle, evolve.
Thanks, Scott, for the mention–even though I sent this one to you by e-mail. Glad to see you remember your manners, too. If I had your traffic, I start a magazine that could not fail.
And nice to see that more and more of your readers are real people who give real names. The courage and moxie of it. Living tributes, all of them, to the Human Spirit. Proud of you guys. Dang.
There is so little gentility left in the world. We must do what we can to encourage its continued existence, lest the Slackoisie force us all to text and wear flip flops year round.
That sounded a bit light in the Guccis.
Stop it. I’m trying to be a good example.
My letters and emails are interchangeable. They’re all good.
Hi, Dan.
What are you doing later on?
Cool it, the two of you. I don’t want this place to get a bad reputation.
Dude: When clients bitch–it doesn’t matter about what–they win. Lawyers lose. That simple. Awful, huh? Dan Hull
Oh all right. Your blawg, your rules.