To create an email template to use in combination with your GoMatters account, click “Compose” in your Gmail account to start an empty email. Leave the “To” and “Subject” fields empty and fill in the “Message” field with the text of your email message. Click the drop arrow in the bottom right corner of the email message pane and select Canned responses > New canned response. Choose a name for the canned response email template and you’re ready to go. If you’re going to be using the email template with GoMatters, delete the email signature before saving the template to avoid insertion of duplicate signatures when composing emails from templates.

From your GoMatters account, click any contact email to open a new message in Gmail. If you click the contact email from the Matters > Contacts tab, the email subject field will be pre-populated with your Matter number and title for easy indexing within Gmail. Once the new email message form opens in your browser, click that same drop arrow in the email message pane you used to create the template in the earlier steps, then choose Canned responses > Insert > Name of your email template.

Nothing screams “I have no mastery of email, I just like pretty things” better than background themes or wallpaper in email. Having a nice pretty background on your email does nothing to show your prowess as a skilled litigator and legal technology innovator. It just shows you like pretty things… and clogging up other people’s inbox limits with worthless attachments.

Yes, worthless attachments because don’t forget, that pretty email background comes through as an attachment which means not only is your email larger than it needs to be, but the email also has an extra paperclip attachment which will befuddled the recipient endlessly as they click the important email attachment from their big time lawyer only to find the file is a download of pretty flowers.

Don’t Forget To Include Matter Numbers And Titles In The Subject Line

Organizing your email is all about the search. To search emails quickly and efficiently, include the full Matter / Case Number and Title in the email subject line. GoMatters will take care of this for you by pre-formatting an email when you click a contact email address from the Matters app.

You would include the full Matter / Case Number in the Re: clause of a letter, wouldn’t you? It only makes sense to do it in an email, too. Which is easier to find by an email search in “2010-011A Jones v. Jones, Deposition Schedule”, “2010-011A” or “Deposition Schedule”. Searching by matter number will deliver all emails ever sent or received in the case. Searching by “Deposition Schedule” will do nothing for you that you can really use because you will have to sift through the search results further to find your matter. Just make it force of habit: email subject line = “Matter Number -> Matter Title -> Topic”.

Don’t Forget Formality With Your Email

Somewhere along the technological evolutionary curve, the business world began to associate email as being less formal than older alternative forms of business communication. Your email should maintain the same formality as an other communication sent from your office. You are representing your client in a professional capacity. It might be difficult to explain to your client an email to opposing counsel in a hotly contested matter that starts out with “Dude…”.

We’ve added automatic event notice emails to GoMatters so you can email an event notice to any matter contact with the press of a button. Login into your GoMatters case mangement account and you will notice the “Email Notice” option on the “Add Event” dialog. Selecting the “Yes” option for emailing notices allows you to customize the email addresses to which GoMatters will send a short event notice. You can also pull up a quick list of all matter contact email addresses by selecting the “All Matter Contacts” option. Add any additional email addresses for the event notice separated by a comma.

Recipients of the event notice will receive a short email notice of the event details of date, time and place that they can easily add to their own calendars. The GoMatters event email also contains a Google Maps link to the event place.