Law Practice Tips

'Get it Delivered - Just as Fast as You Can'
By Jim Calloway, Director, OBA Management Assistance Program

The law office environment has changed significantly over the last few decades. The mechanics of getting documents transferred from one location to another is one major area of change. It is ironic that this change has positively impacted the timeliness and quality of legal services while arguably at the same time it has negatively impacted the quality of the lawyer's life.

Let's face it. In the past, in those long-forgotten slower paced days, (that many of the readers of this column never personally experienced) there was more of a measured pace to the law office environment. A pleading, letter or draft of contract could be completed and dropped into the outgoing mail. The lawyer could then turn to other projects, even taking some time off, secure in the knowledge that a response to this document would not be received for at least two days, and generally three or four.

In the modern business environment, however, it is fax this, overnight that and e-mail all day long. More than one of us has heard the scathing criticism, "What do you mean you haven't looked at it yet? I e-mailed it to you thirty-eight minutes ago." There are dangers in moving communications along too quickly. There is reduced time to catch and correct mistakes. Sometimes a cooling-off period is more conductive to rational business communications than an immediate response. (One example is e-mail "flaming.") But the practice of law involves many deadlines and almost every lawyer at some point in his or her career has been extremely happy to pay the premium fee for a speedy delivery.

While many law firms still employ part-time or full-time couriers, there is no doubt that law offices now deliver large numbers of documents via fax or e-mail.

Delivery services encompass an area where there have been many changes over the last few decades. It is still frankly amazing to me that one can get a package delivered to almost anywhere in the United States by 10:00 a.m. the next morning. Drop off points for these services are located conveniently in most downtown areas.

So this month we thought we'd have a brief overview of the various methods of delivering a document. There are probably some new services that have been launched that have escaped the attention of some of us.

The United States Postal Service - Certainly alternative carriers have made inroads into what used to be the exclusive domain of the U.S. Postal Service. But the U.S. Postal Service still handles more than 40% of the world's card and letter mail volume, delivering more than 200 billion pieces of mail each year. The USPS delivers to almost 138 million homes, businesses and post office boxes. I expect that there are very few law offices, if any, that do not follow the daily routine of processing all of the incoming mail as early as possible in the day and dropping off the out-going mail near the end of the business day.

We all think we are familiar with the postal service, but you may not be aware of all of the services that the USPS offers. If you have not visited its Web site at www.usps.com, you should visit it now. Time is money and you can avoid standing in line at the Post Office by ordering stamps, boxes, shipping materials, pre-printed certified mail envelopes and even pre-printed labels with your return address information. The best thing about these purchases is you get free delivery from your local postal carrier.

One could not discuss the USPS Web site without mentioning the very popular Zip+4 Lookup Page. It is accessible from the main page and the direct link is www.usps.com/zip4. Not only can you locate complete Zip Codes here, but you can locate all Zip Codes in a town/city or all towns that share a single Zip Code. If you were not familiar with this service, it is probably because someone working for you already uses it.

There are many other online services from USPS including electronic bill payment, USPS Send Money and USPS Pay@Delivery,™ which releases funds that a buyer has deposited after it is confirmed the package from seller has been received. This sounds like something useful for some of you online auction devotees. The USPS also does next-day deliveries.

The other delivery services - Everyone is familiar with other nationwide delivery services. These include Federal Express, Airborne Express and UPS. Without attempting to do any research on the topic, my sense is that most Oklahoma law firms tend to use Federal Express. I was, however, recently informed by a law firm in a small northeastern Oklahoma town that UPS was their carrier of choice due to what they viewed as a better delivery schedule.

These services are very competitive and all have Web sites with varying services provided. Online services range from scheduling pickup of one's package to tracking the progress of your delivery as it moves across the country. I once worked with a lawyer whose practice required almost daily outgoing Federal Express deliveries. We were actually provided a dedicated Federal Express computer terminal by the company. Now the casual Federal Express user can have the same level of service and information through the FedEx Web site.

If your office uses one of these services more than a couple of times a year, it is a good idea to check the features of their Web sites and perhaps even do a little price comparison shopping.

Fax - The incorporation of fax machines into law offices was very speedy. For those of us practicing during that time, it seemed as if there were only a few months between "What is a fax machine?" and "What do you mean you don't have a fax machine?" The recent OBA survey indicated that only about half of Oklahoma lawyers had provided a fax number to the OBA to be included in their official records, but my sense is that almost every lawyer has fax capability. The ability to send and receive faxes is just too perfect for our practices. If someone needs to send a document for another to read, sending it via telephone lines is cheaper and superior to any courier service. We've seen faxes evolve from greasy rolls of paper that were inappropriate for permanent retention of records due to their tendency to degrade to plain paper faxes that are like any other paper document.

Many law firms have adopted a policy of using colored paper to print their faxes. This prevents them from being confused with other documents in the office.

For many lawyers, the term "fax machines" is now obsolete. They utilize systems where faxes are sent, received and routed through the computer network. The only time that they are printed is when someone uses the print option to obtain a hard copy. Larger law firms first adopted these systems because it was less expensive than using a runner internally to distribute faxes to the intended recipient. Many solo and small firm lawyers still use a fax machine because internal distribution is not a significant issue.

However, there are other benefits of the computer faxes over the old-style fax machines. One benefit is that the faxes are not so easily "lost." While it is clearly possible to delete a computer file accidentally, it is even easier to misplace a single piece of paper before it makes it to the client file. Inexpensive desktop fax programs like WinFax Pro allow one to fax directly from the computer workstation without having to utilize other staff. You don't even have to get up from the chair. This saves small amounts of time, but even these small amounts of time add up and easily justify the cost of the software.

A lawyer from New York City, David Leffler, recently wrote in an article for the American Bar Association's GP Solo magazine that he improved his practice greatly by filing digital copies of e-mails and receiving faxes in the computerized form as opposed to the fax machine method. He already had a client folder on his computer for each client. He makes a separate folder within that folder entitled Faxes and/or E-mails. He saves each file there under a name that begins with the numerical expressed date and then a description (e.g. 02.12.02settlementoffer.doc.) The benefit is that you can then go to the folder and have a chronologically arranged list of every fax or e-mail you have received or sent in the case. Clicking on the name of the file displays it.

Another faxing alternative is efax.com. This service allows you to sign up for a fax number without actually paying for a phone line. Faxes sent to that number are then sent to your e-mail address as image attachments to the e-mails. The last time I checked you could sign up for free, but to obtain a local phone number cost a small monthly fee, which was easily less than the cost of a business phone line. The huge advantage in this service is for lawyers who travel a lot. Instead of your staff trying to figure out all of the details of sending a fax to the hotel where you are staying that night and the concerns about compromising confidentiality, you just pick up your e-mail to review faxes.

Stamps.com - Oklahoma City attorney Ken Felker swears by stamps.com for postage needs. Rather than signing a long term contract and paying for postage meter rental, he just pays for and prints postage as he needs it when he needs it. He says, "It's easy, you can buy postage online you can print direct to an envelope or onto a label to be attached to an envelope. You can even print reports. It will even do a Zip Code check for you. If you do not have the correct zip code for an address, the service will notify you." One can either print or peel and stick a label directly on the envelope.

There are several different options to getting it here, getting it there, and getting it there quickly. Pick your favorite, try one of these other services listed and save yourself some time to, well, work on other cases. Ahhhhhhh, so long to the good old days when you could take some time off after you finished that brief and dropped it in the mailbox......

tips…

Here are some handy _Web sites to assist you in getting something delivered:

The United States Postal Service® - www.usps.com/
USPS Zip + 4 Code Lookup - www.usps.com/zip4/
Airborne Express - www.airborne.com
Federal Express - www.federalexpress.com
UPS - www.ups.com
Canadian Postal look-up _(for getting the Canadian version of Zip Codes) - www.canadapost.ca/_personal/tools/pci/bin/
Refdesk's Postal Information Page - www.refdesk.com/factpost.html
E-fax - www.efax.com
Stamps.com - www.stamps.com
Anywho.com _(people locator) - www.anywho.com

Originally published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal January 11, 2003 - Vol. 74; No.2