I returned from the ABA Annual Meeting resolved to try to make better use of Outlook Tasks to improve my life. A tip about Task due dates from Michael Linenberger, author of Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook, is a part of that strategy. So far the results are mixed, but I haven't bought the book yet.

I have a hard time writing about e-mail management because I don't feel I have a handle on it, but most people tell me they don't either. I should note I use Outlook 2007, which is much improved over Outlook 2003. With Outlook 2003 you have to customize the view to see your task list when you view your inbox.

As Mr. Linenberger noted, your Outlook inbox should be like the inbox on your desk in the pre-digital world. It is where people send you memos, requests and assignments. You wouldn't let that one fill up several hundred deep as you might miss something important. So why do our inboxes get so clogged? Simple. Many e-mails require your action. It may be you need to respond. Or it may be a project, an assignment, a great opportunity, a or any number of things. But if it was just reading or deleting e-mail, we could probably keep up with that. But, no, it is stuff to do! To wit, it is a task.

So if an e-mail only needs a short reply or if you can forward it to someone else who then has to do the task, it is easy to do right then. But so many of these require time for research, reflection, contemplation, a decision or other "processing" that you cannot do right now. So the natural tendancy is to leave it in your inbox, so you do not forget about it.

Well, of course that is totally bogus, right? If your e-mail is anything like mine it will take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or so for the new incoming e-mails to shove that one down so it is no longer visible on your monitor. Then it becomes part of the "out of sight, out of mind" group. Hopefully you will remember or scroll down and be reminded, but who knows?

So if an e-mail is being retained because it is really a task, save it as a task! Drag it from the inbox to Tasks on the lower left hand corner of display in Outlook 2007. A new Task appears with the subject line and contents of the e-mail. Then do three quick things: edit the subject line to whatever it is you need to do, give it today's date and determine what the due date should be. It there is a hard due date, add it here. It you need to start on it several days in advance, then give that date as the due date and chance the task(subject) line to "do X by Y date."

But Mr. Linenberger states that for most of these e-mails dragged into tasks, set no due date! Now I recognize that goes against the way we lawyers work. If we don't docket, it we might drop the ball. But, here is what may be a liberating thought for you. We get more requests to do stuff in our inbox than we can possibily do. Most of us could spend all day responding to the requests that people toss into our inboxes and never get them all done. Surely you have noticed how many people can write a few short sentences in an e-mail with tasks that would take you hours to fully complete.

If the e-mail is an important assignment from a supervisor or on a client file, give it a due date on your task list. If it is an old classmate wanting you to search your records for contact info for these 20 people so she can contact them about the reunion, that's a "No Due Date" task. Bear with me.

The next step is to get that e-mail out of your inbox. If you made it a task, usually you can delete it. All of the text in that e-mail is now stored in your Tasks so it is fine to delete it from your inbox. Sometimes you have to file it, as when it is e-mail on a client file. If you aren't using another e-mail filing method (like practice management software) then drag it to an Outlook folder. You should have lots of these folders set up, including one for very major project you are working on. But you should also have general folders just so you can clear your inbox, like Friends, Recreation, Hold, Unsure, 2009 Junk or WhenBored. The point is to move everything out of your inbox, either to a task or file it in a folder.

OK, back to those No Due Date Tasks. You want to collapse the view so they are not in the way for your day-to-day work and then at least weekly check them to see if any now should be assigned a due date or now have passed and can be deleted. A good review time would be Monday, Friday or anytime you seem to be getting caught up on your tasks. The No Due Tasks serves as your triage system. You just hope no salvagable patients die. But it may be that you can't save them all.

So let's end this discussion with a couple of time management clichés.

OHIO- Only Handle it Once. After you open an e-mail, either delete it, file it, handle it quickly or make it a task. But don't just close it and leave it in the inbox to be handled later. Again you should feel free to make a folder that is named DontKnow or Unsure if you are having trouble filing all e-mails in folders.

The pros refer to the Four D's: Do, Delete, Delegate or Defer. But you cannot defer by leaving it to get buried in your inbox. So you Defer by either making it a task (which you will likely get to) or filing it in a folder, which you might get to at some time, but probably won't.

A lawyer I know told me she had to complete her "semi" work before going on vacation. She continued , "you know, in case I get hit by a semi while on vacation, I wouldn't want people to find a mess here." Unfortunately, life is unpredictable and be it a semi mishap or just not waking up one morning, none of us knows when that day will happen.

In these times not only could someone find a mess in your office, but they might take digital pictures of it that could end up online. Take a look at these pictures from a deceased lawyer's office in the recent blog post by Courtney Kennaday of the the South Caroline Bar "When you go to Heaven…will your practice look like this?"

The point isn't really how messy your desk might be, but how organized your files are and how easy it will be for those who follow you to take care of your clients and your uncompleted work. So, as Courtney did, I'll take one more opportunity to mention the article "When You Go to Heaven, Will Your Practice Go to Hell?" that Courtney and ReidTrautz published earlier this year.

Take a few minutes now to read the article and plan, so pictures like those won't be a part of your legacy.

Way back when I was in law school, telling someone you were going to practice animal law would have probably provoked about the same reaction as saying you were going to focus on alien abduction damage claims. But now I've seen seminar presentations on the topic and more lawyers are claiming it as a practice area. If you practice animal law or just want to know what the heck the term means, check out the July/August 2009 issue of GPSOLO Magazine with an Animal Law theme.

UPDATE: The FTC announced this week that it will delay enforcement of the Red Flags Rule until November 1, 2009.

A new Federal Trade Commission rule proposes requiring businesses to have a written plan to identify and respond to "Red Flags" indicating possible identity theft.  Failure to comply may result in several government sanctions. Many feel that these should not apply to law firms and the American Bar Association has communicated that belief to the FTC.

Here's an article from the Ohio Lawyer with more details about the rule. But the date is almost here and, according to the FTC, if the lawyer regularly defers payment for services performed the rule applies. The FTC told the doctors the same thing. So if you tell a client they can pay their bill late because their home was just destroyed a few federal rule applies to your firm? I'd hate to guess the meaning of "regularly" for most law practices.

The good news is that the legal profession has long protected the confidentiality of client information. The bad news is that this is so deeply ingrained in the DNA of law firms that the required written documentation may be sparse and identity theft issues may present a somewhat different risk.

Maybe the answer is to reduce to writing the many protections of our clients' confidentiality we already have in place.

Judith D. Equels, Director of The Florida Bar's Law Office Management program, has these observations:

"Here are some tried and true tips for preserving client/matter confidentiality and file security from the annals of good old fashioned law office policies:

• No one should have access to personal information in a client/matter file except those assigned to work on the file. Who has access to your client files?

• Visitors, guests, clients, maintenance staff, janitorial staff, repairman and vendors should not be allowed to roam the office without being accompanied by a firm employee.

• Consider making offers of employment contingent on a clean criminal background check.

• Grant weekend and after hours access to the firm's offices to only those who must have 24-7 access. Keep an accurate record of those with access privileges, and review it regularly.

• No files are ever removed from the firm's premises without specific written authorization from an owner of the law firm. If a file must be taken out of the office, must it be the whole file?

• It is important to verify the identity of new clients. Also, during the course of the work, it is often necessary to verify and/or hold client's personal information. Use a checklist that risky information has been collected/verified. Redact the working copy for the file, and lock up the originals, or the full copy if the original was returned to the client. This would include birthdates, SSN's, DL numbers, birth certificates, passports, medical files, banking information, tax returns and the like.

• No one enjoys the task of putting up files at the end of the day, even though we know we're supposed to secure them. Just do it! This may mean installing a lock on the lawyer's private office door.

• Buy a shredder/shredders with enough capacity to handle the job for your firm's needs.

• Imaged files are more easily protected, but then how secure is the firm's file server? Are sensitive drives password protected? Does the firm change the password frequently? And, is access to the backup media adequately protected?

• Most lawyers and law firm employees have remote access to the firm's information, are there limits and boundaries in place to prohibit access to sensitive client/matter information? What is an employee capable of downloading on a laptop, from his/her PC?

• Never send a client's personal information to be copied at a commercial copy service center.

• Never release a file to another lawyer without obtaining the client's written permission.

• And, finally, here's a really old policy, but it works: If an employee's workspace is in the common area of the law firm, papers are turned face down when not actively working on same, and these papers/files are secured at the end of the day."

I think Judith has a lot of great points and I appreciate her letting me share them in this space. If you want help preparing documentation, the FTC has also placed a form online for businesses at low risk of identity theft. It is a six page fill-in-the-blank form.

Many lawyers are finding themselves in the position of opening a law practice due to circumstances that were not entirely voluntary. The July, 2009 edition of Law Practice Today has the theme Suddenly Solo and it is a great collection of articles and links to many online resources. This webzine is an incredible resource for new lawyers starting a practice as well. Let's spread the word about this resource. Blog it, Tweet it. Link to it. And, most importantly, take a few minutes to e-mail the link to any lawyer you know who may be in the process of starting up a small firm practice.

The link above is to the current issue of Law Practice Today. As we say in blogging jargon, here is the permalink: http://www.abanet.org/lpm/lpt/archives/july09.shtml This should be good for years into the future if you want to add the link to a website. 

Between the articles and the linked resources contained in this issue, a lawyer can invest hours of reading, study and planning their future here.

I'll note that Allison Shields and I contributed 50 Web Resources for the Suddenly Solo Lawyer. It was great working with Allison.

This month's Digital Edge podcast features Sharon Nelson and me interviewing Ross Kodner on the topic of How Good Lawyers Survive Bad Times. Look for a new book from the American Bar Association with that title coming very soon. 

But there are many other great articles. The volunteers of the editorial board of LPT have done a great job this month, as have my fellow contributors. Now it is time to do your part and spent a moment or two sharing the link with those you know.and encouraging them to pass it along.

(UPDATE: Fixed bad links. Sorry about that.)

I hate spam e-mail. It fills my inbox and wastes my time. I saw a report from a bar association this week that 94% of its incoming e-mail was spam. Of course, they filter most of that out.

But today I want to make sure you understand that some of the advice you received in the old days is not good advice anymore.

While there are many kinds of spammers, for today's discussion, let's assume there are two kinds: lawbreakers and legitimate businesses.

For lawbreakers and those who operate in the gray areas, we need help from the FBI, IT people, spam filters and the like. We can't do much on our own.

But many otherwise legitmate businesses use "e-mail marketing." Surely, I am not the only one who has noticed that when I toss business cards into fishbowls, trying to win a nicer iPod or some other great prize, what I always seems to win is being added to the company's e-mail marketing list. Other companies seem to add me just because they ran across my blog and found my e-mail address.

But, In the old days we were told never to click on "Unsubscribe" links at the bottom of spam e-mail as it just confirmed your identity and generated more spam. But since the federal CAN SPAM Act is being enforced, that is no longer true. So I regularly click on unsubscribe links to reduce the inflow of unwanted commercial e-mail. If I get spam e-mail that doesn't have an unsubscrobe option at the bottom, I will reply with a warning of legal consequences and a link to the FTC's page on requirements for commercial e-mailers. Often I get a quick apology by return e-mail. A person who built illegal spamming tools even got a jail sentence earlier this summer. Try it. It even makes you feel good.

Irwin Karp gave a very well-received presentation to our Oklahoma Bar Solo and Small Firm Conference on Overcoming Procrastination [How to Break the Habit.] He has graciously allowed us to publish a generous portion of his materials online. These include resources, information on procrastination "styles" and causes, some great quotes and a fill-in-the blank personal action plan. Download this paper and pass the permalinklink to this post along to your friends.

Someone once asked me why lawyers are often procrastinators. Being a lawyer, I didn't concede the point. But I did note that in traditional law school education, your grades are based on one single exam that you take at the very end of the semester.

I'm heading off to Salt Lake City for tomorrow's program Economic Stimulus Package for Lawyers: Surviving Today’s Economy. The Utah bar staff are always such good hosts, so it will be a fun time. But doing a day-long program (almost) by oneself creates an extra sense of responsibility. Lincoln Mead will join me for the 60 Tips portion. Lincoln is a good friend and was with me on the 60 Sites panel for ABA TECHSHOW. Speaking of ABA TECHSHOW, thanks again to Laura Calloway and the TECHSHOW board for getting Richard Susskind to speak. His speech really informed my thougts on this topic. You can still listen to his speech on the TECHSHOW website. I may listen to it again in the hotel tonight.

"Effectively Staffing Your Law Firm" was just released by the ABA General Practice, Solo and Small Firm Division. It addresses an important area of law firm management from the smaller firm perspective. I made a modest contribution to the book with a chapter on "Care and Feeding of the Law Office Staff." You can see the table of contents and read the first chapter here.

"In only ten television seasons, Murphy Brown went through some ninety-three secretaries. L.A. Law's McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak had Benny Stulwitz, the mentally challenged office worker. Real-life California lawyer Edward L. Masry had Erin Brockovich. And, of course, Perry Mason had Della Street. So, who's helping you get the work done?

"Every lawyer in a solo or small firm likes to think that only those who've taken the oath and been admitted to the bar are at the helm, but the reality is that the engine driving the office is the staff." — jennifer j. rose, Editor, *Effectively Staffing Your Law Firm*