Lawyers, how many emails do you get each day?

[Anonymous]

I am drowning in a sea of emails. I have a relatively specialized, niche practice that services many clients of the firm across all practice groups, so I am inundated with requests for "quick" advice, which require anywhere from 1-5 hours per request. These little things add up and gobble up time. I find myself neglecting my 'real' clients. I am constantly behind. I have emails that are unread. Constantly feeling behind schedule or late on deliverables is making me crazy and adding 10x the stress I already feel. Looking for perspective here - am I just failing miserably at a very basic fact of life for a busy attorney? Or would anyone be overwhelmed at this level? I've been practicing 10+ years, so I'm not exactly new to this.

So, on an average day, how many emails do you receive requiring some sort of response? (List serves and solicitations for translations services don't count). How do you triage? What are your strategies?

[Anonymous]

Yes, it's easy to spend the whole day answering other people. You are busy but you might not be getting important things done. The first thing is to figure out what's important - for example, is answering you colleagues' quick questions billable work, or important to your status at the firm? If not, limit it: maybe you get to one a day. If it is important, try blocking off chunks of the day where you turn off email and work on your own matters. Set goals for the day: today I'm going to draft that memo for my client, and I will also answer 2 questions from colleagues. There are a lot of paper and electronic tools for managing time like this.

[Anonymous]

Also, can you push some matters down to an associate? If your practice is so important to the firm they should be bringing up someone behind you.

[Anonymous]

53

[Anonymous]

20-30

[Anonymous]

I'm a legal secretary. My partner easily gets about 150-200. But some are from law360.com, LGREG, Bisnow, etc.

Every few days I go into his email box and delete all the newsletters and advertisements, so all that's left is client-related stuff.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Today I got 99 (though a few may be BNA/Law360) and today was not a particularly busy day.

23:56 hit the nail on the head. It is easy to be 'busy' for 10 hours a day without ever finishing any of the bigger tasks on my list. I find it challenging to prioritize my time, particularly because the squeaky wheel gets the grease and whatnot.

Any other strategies appreciated.

[Anonymous]

200 or so. I try to triage and delegate to others as much as possible. I used to take a lot of time to do this, now I do it as quickly as possible. Also I block time on my schedule for email review, which helps me catch stragglers. It is tough and I am usually behind somewhat.

[Anonymous]

200 or so. I try to triage and delegate to others as much as possible. I used to take a lot of time to do this, now I do it as quickly as possible. Also I block time on my schedule for email review, which helps me catch stragglers. It is tough and I am usually behind somewhat.

[Anonymous]

About 250. I am in house. I address the non urgent ones three times a day. That's all I can do and get my job done..

[Anonymous]

Use filters people -- why are you making your paralegal do this manually??

[Anonymous]

About 400-500. I feel like fully half my job is going through them. I do use filters, and also aggressively unsubscribe and mark spam for vendor e-mails. The largest problem is listservs I have for larger cases where I really need to at least put my eyeballs on every e-mail that comes in. Many of them are under 5-10 seconds per e-mail but that's still 15-20% of my day.