Learn MS Word Legal: Some Tips Concerning Email - Survival At Work

I don't have to tell you that when you work for a company, that you have to be aware of certain things relating to using your company email. 1. Everything you send is saved and most probably monitored at one point or another, so stay away from internal gossip. Not a good idea. If you go to your own email and not the firm issued email, your keystrokes are still being captured on whatever workstation you use or login depending on the size and sophistication of the firm. When you can, use your smart phone to send an email or just wait until you get home. You are better off just staying out of office click situations and their internal email system altogether. Provocative pictures, raunchy jokes and the like when passed around, will show "your email" and "you" don't know who will be looking at it. Do you really want to be on the radar of HR? 2. If you are angry about something that either happened in the office or something you received by email, then do your email response as a draft email and do not fill in the recipient line so there is no chance of the email going out prematurely. Wait an hour, look at the response you wrote and remove emotion and anger. Stick to the facts and your suggestions to remedy the situation. 3. When responding to someone, make sure you select the proper recipient. An example would be you sending an internal email to B. Smith instead of E. Smith. E. Smith never received the email he/she was waiting on from you and now you are home and sleeping. 4. When sending documents out of the firm, make sure you email the recipient intended. Check the spelling, middle initial etc. Last thing you really want is to send documents to someone that was not supposed to see those particular files. 5. If you send files to someone with a password, ask the attorney whether the intended party 1. already has the password, 2. If not, will the attorney be the one who calls the client to give them the password? 3. If not, and the recipient is in another time zone and calls for the info to be able to open that file, ask the attorney how late he/she can be called at home. This does happen. Maybe it is Sunday eve where you are, but in China, Japan and Australia, it is late Monday morning and they are doing business and don't want to wait another half a day for you. 6. Remember to distinguish between link to a file vs. loading up the documents into the email. It is frustrating for a client to have all the files listed but because they are outside your system they cannot access the file(s). Make sure you give them the actual file. 7. Finally, slow down. An extra minute or two won't matter that much but will help to avoid some errors. Read your messages and look for misspellings etc. or missing information. Cc and BC the appropriate people. Focus and things will go smooth. Training From An Inside Perspective www.advanceto.com