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.

Most law office setups have a file server to store files locally in the office that serves files out to desktop client workstations throughout the office. GoMatters network speeds are faster than even the most sophisticated office network setups. The bottom line is our stuff is just faster and more powerful… a lot faster and more powerful than the average law office.

When you match our network speed with the organizational skills of our practice management system, you get something we like to call “real office speed”. Real office speed is a combination of machine time and human time to complete a real office task.

Take for example finding a word document on your desktop. What’s the real office speed of finding a client document on your desktop? In most cases you’re looking at finding the file in one of two ways, directly looking through your system file finder like Mac OS X’s Finder or searching for the document through your word processor’s “Open” file link. Either way, you’re now at the mercy of your office file storage structure and the file naming conventions of those in your office. Don’t forget, if your word processor is not open, you’ve got to add time for that. Even the best setups make you look for a documents folder… click… look for a client folder… click… look for a case folder… click… look for a file folder! There it is, finally! The file folder. Have some office fun this Friday and time yourself and those in your office and see what the average lookup time is for a file in a folder.

Now our way of doing things… Matters app > type the first two or three letters of a client name… there it is… click the Matter, now Matter > Documents… and there it is… faster than a desktop.

Taking a few simple steps to reduce your paper output will go a long way. Storing your documents in GoMatters is an obvious first step, but once the document has been stored in the cloud, what else can be done to cut down on the paper associated with that document.

Think “copying”. As lawyers, we can do some copying. Some lawyers make more money off their copier than they do on total hourly fees. But copies generate paper which takes up space… and on and on and on.

One technique is to stop the copying right away. Once a document is scanned, don’t copy it, toss it all over the place in electronic format via email but try not to copy it again. Obviously that will help, but how about not even storing that document in the physical file folder to begin with? One place this technique works great is with general correspondence that must be forwarded to clients. The usual practice is to make a copy of the original and send the copy to the client and store the original in the file.

If you can, try to scan the original document, store that in your GoMatters account and send the original to the client with your traditional cover letter making only a copy of the cover letter for the physical file and print the document reference as listed in your GoMatters account on a single sheet of paper and attach the document reference sheet to the cover letter for the physical file. Anyone back tracking through the physical file will see the correspondence with your GoMatters document reference sheet attached indicating the attachment sent with the original letter is stored in your firm’s GoMatters account and can be found there.

Even in a small office, this technique can save reams of paper. If you send 10 general correspondence letters daily (a very small amount indeed) with attachments that average 10 pages in size, that’s 110 pieces of paper for daily correspondence (10 letters plus 10 attachments at 10 sheets). Using this simple paper reduction technique will cut that 110 sheets of paper to 20! Multiply your savings out over the course of the week and you’ve already saved 1 ream of paper with this ridiculously simple paper saver. Think about the physical file space you’ll save in a week, month or year if you’re office is eliminating at least 90 sheets of paper daily.

To print a document reference sheet for documents stored in your GoMatters account, select the document to reference from the document list using the checkbox for the selected document row and then click the Print button from the document list to print your reference.

Search for matters by contact name

Even the most competent attorney can forget a client name every once in a while. It’s a heck of a lot easier to remember a client’s name than it is to remember a client’s case number or matter number. You’re a lawyer, not a computer.

Searching for matters by contact name renders the matter number virtually useless. For lawyers, that’s a good thing.

Why does the matter number… no pun intended… matter? Lawyers are reactive in their matter/case numbering system. Whether the matter/case number be that of a court, insurance company or opposing counsel’s-mega-firm number, in most cases, lawyers are forced to reference an external matter number and unless you have a piece of paper in front of you with the number in black and white, to locate a file, you have to waste a few minutes to find out a (basically) worthless number. Waste that extra few minutes 5 times a day and you’re up to 15-20 minutes of wasted time every day. That’s an hour a week wasting time on a worthless number.

If you could look through every file in your office any way you could, would it be easier to find matter number 11-blah-blah-blah or would it be easier to find Mr. Johnson’s divorce file? How many times have you barked to a paralegal “Get me matter number 11-72889GV6!”? Isn’t it a lot easier to say “Get the Taylor matter.”?

To search for a matter in GoMatters using the client/contact name:

• Switch to the Contacts app using the app switcher button
• Search for the client by name and double click the contact record
• Click the Matters tab in the Contacts attributes panel
• Double click the contact matter to show the matter record

Conflict checking for lawyers can be a cumbersome task in the day to day law office routine. Ethical conflicts are a pitfall for lawyers governed by Rule 1.7 of the ABA Model Rules Professional Conduct which states the general rule: “a lawyer shall not represent a client if the representation involves a conflict of interest.” Rule 1.9 further prohibits a lawyer who has formerly represented a client in a matter from thereafter representing another person in the same or substantially related matter in which that person’s interests are materially adverse to the interests of the former client unless the former client gives informed consent, confirmed in writing.

Conflict checking for lawyers

GoMatters simplifies conflict checking for lawyers by keeping track of contact-matter relationships for every matter you create. Every matter to which a contact has been assigned is viewed easily under the “Contacts->Matters” tab. To view the matters to which a contact has been assigned, view the contact and then click the contact’s “Matters” tab to show the list of matters in which the contact is a party. The list of contact matters gives you a quick view of import information about a contact’s role in a particular matter.

It is always best to maintain a consistent set of role descriptions for your law firm contact management so other members of your law office and legal staff will be able to understand notations made in your contact management database. Abbreviations for contact roles are fine if everyone in the law firm is familiar with the role abbreviations and understands their meaning. GoMatters allows full flexibility for you to name your law firm contact roles in a way in which you are most comfortable. Full text contact role descriptions like “defendant” and “plaintiff” are supported or you can decide to use your own system of abbreviations or notations like “opp” (opposing party), “opcl” (opposing counsel), “pcl” (plaintiff’s counsel) or “dcl” (defendant’s counsel).

Be sure to check out the following contact management video tutorials:

• How to add matter contacts
• How to search contacts

The best tip for managing your contact roles is a simple one, just do it. Add every party to every case as a part of your initial case intake. Add contacts as parties to the case as they become available during the pendency of the proceedings. As a general rule for practicing law, the more information you have, the better off you will be. Contact matter management for your law firm is no different.

By having access to the information about the role of a contact in a matter, lawyers can perform an initial conflict check. No legal software system can determine whether or not a true ethical conflict exists in the lawyer’s representation of a client, but managing contact information successfully is the first step to avoiding a serious conflict issue in your representation.

Tracking files by year fits perfectly with the idea that after a certain year, files of a certain vintage can be destroyed to make room for new files that will inevitably clog the file cabinets for another 10 years or so.

Year based file numbering systems for law offices also correlate loosely to numbering systems set by courts that traditionally number new cases with some form of date notation. For example, cases started in 2010 may have a case number like 2010-XX-XXXX.

As lawyers move toward digital files and the paperless law office, the idea of expunging files to make room for new files becomes unimportant. SaaS solutions for lawyers like GoMatters are helping to obviate the need for physical storage space and offer the possibility of limitless data storage accessible in a few clicks.

Most lawyers find themselves unnecessarily duplicating the work of numbering files or cases because law offices, for the most part, are reactionary, meaning the law office reacts to cases that have actually been generated in other places like the court. Ask yourself, if the court already has an elaborate case number assigned to a matter, why are you worried about how you are going to number the same case for your office? Why not just use the case number assigned by the court for your own internal office number?

Don’t you hate the “Our file number:”, “Your file number:” in all those RE: clauses of letters? Isn’t it time to stop that? Do it now, it is a new year after all.

GoMatters allows you to enter any matter number you like and will even automatically assign a matter number for you. But if you just use the case number assigned by the court for matter numbers, it will help you track your cases faster and more efficiently by reducing your need to duplicate lookups of other case numbers. It can also increase your law office efficiency by cutting out the “Our file number:”, “Your file number:” dance.

But what happens when you open a case in GoMatters and have no case number from a court yet? The best practice when opening a new matter that has yet to be assigned a case number by a court would be to use the client name as the matter number or choose the “Auto Assign” checkbox when adding the matter so that GoMatters will create a matter number for you. Once you file the case with the court, double click the Matter Number cell in the Matters Tab and change the old matter number to the new matter number assigned by the court. By synchronizing your internal law office file and case numbers with the court file and case numbers, you can streamline your file numbering system and make your law office more efficient in the new year.

Firefox

To set Firefox to open email address links in Gmail or other webmail app like Yahoo! Mail, open Firefox and go to the Tools->Options->Applications (Mac: Preferences->Applications) and type “mailto” in the search box to find the Firefox dropdown mail app selector. Choose your webmail from the options and save your settings.

Change default email client for Firefox

Safari

To set Safari to open email address links in Gmail, you need to download Google Notifier for the Mac. Once Google Notifier is installed on your Mac, open your Mac Mail application and go to Preferences->General and select the Google Notifier from the Default Email Reader drop-down list.

Change default email client for Safari

Once your browser is set to open your new default mail application, any GoMatters contact email links will open in your preferred mail application.

• ATT: [mobile-number]@txt.att.net
• Verzion: [mobile-number]@vtxt.com
• Sprint: [mobile-number]@messaging.sprintpcs.com
• T-Mobile: [mobile-number]@tmomail.net
• AIM: 1+[mobile-number]

When adding a new task, check the “Send SMS” box to send a text message to the user’s mobile phone.

Sending tasks by text message works great when secretaries or paralegals need to get quick messages to you when you are out of the office or stuck in court. With GoMatters new task SMS service, “return call to client” messages can be entered once, sent via text, and acted upon that much quicker.

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.