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Medical Malpractice


words in e-mail messages (for example, a client’s name, or defense attorney who only works on specific cases), then batch link those messages to the case. You can also sort quickly by sender, subject or even whether the e-mail has an attachment by clicking on the gray bar above the e-mails (From, Subject, Paperclip icon). Te search feature is particularly important in the beginning, when you are culling through the hundreds (dare I say thousands?) of e-mails in you inbox.


Tip No. 3: Use Folders (But Sparingly!)


Many e-mail programs allow you to create folders or use labels to categorize your e-mails. Tis can be a useful tool for those e-mails that you want easy long-term reference to (not case specific e-mails, which should be linked to that case using your case management system). For example, I have folders for personal e-mails, a legal research folder, and an MAJ folder. In Outlook 2003, click File>New>Folder and type the name of the folder, and click where you would like it to reside (typically the inbox). You should not, however, just send all of your e-mails from the inbox to these folders—that only gives you the appearance of organization.





Tip No. 4: Use Reminders If you have no other automated method of following


up on e-mails, most systems provide a method to flag and add reminders. Te reminders will automatically pop-up at a specified date and time with the e-mail. For example, in Microsoft Outlook 2003, if you want to set a reminder to address a particular e-mail, click Actions>Follow- Up>Add Reminder, then click a flag color and enter a due date and time. Te only difficulty with Reminders is that it is unwieldy to search non-flagged reminders. So, make sure to add a color-coded flag.


Tip No. 5: Get Digest Version of Listserve Messages


One of the biggest offenders of the well-manicured inbox is the listserve message.


If you’re like me, you


subscribe to multiple listserves. On an average Wednesday, this contributed 148 messages to my inbox. Te best way to manage these is to change your subscription to digest form, so you get one daily e-mail including all of the list messages as individual attachments. Otherwise, you can use rules to send all listserve messages to a specific folder. Which leads us to…


Tip No. 6: Use Rules You can create rules for almost any contingency. For


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56 Trial Reporter / Summer 2010 


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example, you can set up your e-mail system to automatically process e-mails from specific senders, with specific words in the subject line or body, or with a specific importance. Tose messages can be deleted, moved to a specific folder, sent to your phone, or even printed. In Microsoft Office 2003, click Tools>Rules and Alerts>New Rule and follow the prompts to create your rule from scratch, or using a template. Tis is a good way to keep track of assignments sent from a supervisor or to an assistant by sending messages to specific folders.


Tip No. 7: Convert E-mails to PDF Documents If you have PDF functionality enabled on your


Microsoft Outlook 2003, you can select individual messages (or, use the Control button to select numerous non-sequential messages) and click Adobe PDF>Convert Selected Messages>Create New PDF. Tis will convert those documents to a PDF that can be saved on your system network, or easily forwarded to others as an attachment.


Tip No. 8: Eliminate Spam Tis is really a variation on the Rules Tip, but has a


more nuanced application—getting rid of spam. In an average day, I used to get about 50 spam messages. Many


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