This episode covers another subject that lawyers don’t do well – communication. Surprise! This whole Substack promotes techniques of communication that lawyers incorporate into their routines. But there is one thing they do poorly, and that is delivery.
In Contracts 101, lawyers learn that contracts don’t come into effect until they are ‘signed, sealed and delivered’, as goes the song by Stevie Wonder. OK, forget the ‘sealed’ bit because that’s archaic, even to lawyers. Focus on the delivery part.
Have you ever sent a text, email, or social media message and wondered if the intended recipient got it? If so, will they act on it? The current trend is for people to skim messages. They may not get past the re: line, at least not with their complete focus. We all multi-task to some extent. The level of focus seems to reduce with the length of the message. Sesame Street’s ideal of a 3-minute sketch had the modern-day reader in mind.
Any lawyer will tell you that delivery means transmission and receipt. Both operations are necessary for there to be effective delivery. How often does your message go into the recipient’s spam or trash folder or otherwise go unread? Entirely by accident, of course. How often did you or your recipient undergo some form of operations failure? And how often was your recipient too busy to either read or reply (or both)?
With that in mind, here is the formula to improve the efficiency of your communication delivery.
1. Draft your message in a way that the recipient knows you expect some form of reply. That means your message should be easy to understand. Use short sentences in simple language. No acronyms or jargon allowed!
2. Put the request for confirmation of receipt or a reply in the re: line! Something like, ‘Please confirm you got this’ or ‘Please reply’ will do.
3. Even messages should have a theme. You should be able to say, ‘That message was about…’ in a few words. Use that theme in the re: line.
4. Most messages should have a ‘call to action’. That is what you want the recipient to do with it. If you are only writing to inform, maybe the ‘call to action’ is to absorb your message. But it may be to set a date or a target or to request some form of activity. Make that clear. You can’t put this in the re: line, so put it at the end. Consider some form of accent – not ALL-CAPs, because people perceive that to be shouting, as Mr. Trump intends. Maybe use italics. Be careful about using colours because the recipient’s operating system may not handle them well.
If you don’t receive the requested reply, you may assume there is a chance (big or small) of delivery failure. There is also the non-trivial chance that your recipient received your message but did not notice the request for confirmation or reply. Follow up politely. ‘Maybe you didn’t get this, but I tried to send the following message on XXX day.’ End with your requested action, whether to confirm receipt or reply.
Now, here’s another tip. Practice what you preach, as the Golden Rule says. When you receive a communication, acknowledge receipt. Let the sender know you got it. Maybe also say you will act on it, read it, or can’t get to it until later. Whatever. Just don’t leave the sender in suspense. A future post will discuss time management – something lawyers do exceptionally well.
Exercise: This one’s easy and obvious. Incorporate this formula immediately into all your written communications. Notice how quickly you reduce the back and forth, improving efficiency. Now, your recipient and you will be on the same page – at least with what was said.
Here is a short podcast to discuss this technique.