Tommy Richardson, a partner at the Phoenix, AZ-based personal injury litigation firm Friedl Richardson, stays connected with everybody else in the firm using Yahoo Messenger.
“This way, we coordinate our responses to clients,” Richardson explains. “An associate can IM (instant message) me about how to answer client questions while a client is on the phone. No one in the office needs to put a client on hold.”
“It makes the client think the firm is more of a cohesive unit. The client gets the same responses with whomever they’re speaking.”
Richardson joins business people of all stripes, including lawyers, who have discovered the business value of IM.
Friedl Richardson attorneys originally used Yahoo Messenger on their BlackBerries while outside the office, then started using it in the office “for the efficiency of it”. They stick to Messenger since it’s a “client-agnostic” system (unlike BlackBerry Messenger) that also works on the firm’s computers and iPads.
While Richardson doesn’t mind the “consumer-grade” nature of Yahoo Messenger, he does take precautions. “Outside the office, I’m very guarded as to what shows on my iPad screen,” he says, adding “I avoid swapping files using Messenger. I reference file names, I create shortcuts to documents.” (Such shortcuts help people avoid unnecessary document duplication.)
When communicating with clients, other attorneys or the courts, Richardson sticks with email.
Susan Nickle, co-founder of Toronto-based e-discovery consultancy Wortzman Nickle Professional Corporation, explains email (given things like its to, from, and subject line fields) lies somewhere on the “formality spectrum” between a post-dated letter (with the highest level of formality) and IM (with the lowest). “It’s a matter of degree,” she says.
Richardson recommends lawyers use separate business and personal IM accounts. “The only people in the contact list for my business Yahoo account are people in my firm,” he says. “Any accidental ‘send’ would only go to others in the office.”
Unlike Friedl Richardson, Wortzman Nickle staff don’t formally use IM in the office, outside of some texting. “IM is best for informal, non-business communication,” Nickle says. “It lacks the requisite level of professionalism and formality, and the information may be difficult to retrieve.”
That said, people increasingly use IM for business – even if their companies don’t realize it. Nickle wrote a records-management policy for a company whose executives, unbeknownst to IT staff, were using a messaging tool to communicate with each other about substantive issues.
“They had not enabled the automatic ‘save’ feature,” Nickle recalls, adding that they “flipped the switch” once they realized what executives were doing.
Some companies waffle about whether to enable IM. “People will use it anyway,” Nickle states, especially people under 30 who commonly forego phone calls for IM, using personal devices if necessary.
“This is a big cultural shift, and important for businesses that want to retain young people,” Nickle says.
The demographic stereotype isn’t entirely accurate. When we spoke, Nickle was using a loaner BlackBerry (hers had recently “died”) on which she had not set up BlackBerry Messenger. “My friends, who are in their 40s, complain bitterly that they can’t reach me by BBM. I’m fully accessible by email, and they hate it.”
“If I had BBM when I was a teenager,” Nickle admits, “my parents’ phone would have been all their own.”
The immediacy of IM can be a double-edged sword. “People get mad if they send somebody an email in the morning and they haven’t received a reply by the afternoon,” Nickle notes. “The problem with IM is that people can tell if you read your message, and people get cranky if you don’t respond immediately.”
“Sometimes you want to think about what your response is going to be, or you quickly glance at the message and choose to deal with it later, but the fact that you glanced at it is confirmed at the other end.”
Chuck Rothman, Wortzman Nickle’s director of e-discovery services, claims some organizations want to improve staff efficiency by mitigating “immediacy”. For instance, some companies set up SharePoint sites people can check on their own time . “It’s like Facebook for corporate,” he says.
Want to learn more about IM? “IT people don’t bite,” Rothman wryly notes. “You can actually talk to them. They’re a great resource.”
Effectively using IM
Setting out policies and guidelines can help your firm use IM to improve its performance.
Rothman warns against focussing policies on current technologies. “Several years ago, IM was for kids and IT geeks, and now it’s common practice,” Rothman says. “Five years from now, there may be new technology on the horizon.”
“People need to stop thinking about the method of communication and think more broadly about the content communicated,” Nickle adds.
Wondering how IM can fit into your work? Consider the following tips from Rothman and Nickle:
Use IM for brief communications only
Just as email is not always the appropriate medium for formal correspondence, IM is not suitable for all types of communication. Use the phone, schedule a meeting or use some other method to discuss weighty issues.
Don’t use IM to deal with conflicts or contentious issues
Since personal feelings and tone are difficult to convey in written form, IM may exacerbate rather than quell conflicts.
Control the technology, don’t let it control you
You can spend your day jumping from one conversation to the next, or you can make yourself unavailable for periods of time each day. Conversely, respect others’ status. They aren’t ignoring you if they don’t respond immediately.
Save the transcript
It is difficult to determine whether a conversation will be a business record before you start said conversation. A simple “Are you going to the meeting?” may turn into something substantive. Keep IM logging turned on so that you retain all business communications.
Use emoticons sparingly
Emoticons are cute when chatting with your kids, but have no place in a business environment. Remember, business records (including IM) can be discoverable. Do you want that little happy face displayed in court?
Originally published in Lawyers Weekly.
For a PDF of this article, click here.