Lawyers & text messaging

I have been thinking more about text messaging and its use by attorneys to communicate with clients. It seems there is a large subset of lawyers who believe that text messaging should not be used to communicate with clients.  I can understand why, but I am not sure that I agree.

The argument against lawyers text messaging their clients is several-fold:

1. short messages are easily misconstrued
2. text messages are not easily preserved
3. short messages cannot convey enough information to the client (or from the client to the lawyer)
4. text messaging is scary and unfamiliar technology
5. text messaging grants the client too much access and too immediate of access to the attorney

I’m certain this is not an exhaustive list. But it is a hefty enough list to dissuade lawyers from using text messaging technologies. Some of the concerns, I think, are legitimate (or at least borderline so), while others I am more skeptical of.

What’s that you say?

I think the first one—short messages are easily misconstrued—is probably the most compelling, but probably not for the reason you’d think. If #1 is a problem, then it is so because of the lawyer’s lack of communication skills, either or both in transmitting information to the client or receiving information from the client. These lawyers who would fail at text messaging often also already fail at e-mail composition and interpretation, and voicemail dictation.

A brief text message need not be any more or less prohibitive to communication than a brief phone conversation or voicemail message.

Do you record all of your telephone conversations?

The criticism that text messages are not easily preserved, while perhaps more true in the past on Jurassic cell phones than on our modern pocket-brains, is hardly a serious concern unless the lawyer tapes all in-person and telephonic conversations with clients.

Furthermore, as I alluded with the pocket-brain comment, preserving text messages, even in the hundreds or thousands, is child’s play on modern smart phones. The high-capacity storage on my iPhone, for example, permits me to keep more text messages on there than I can possible require during a client’s case. Backing messages up to the computer is a simple operation, as is restoring preserved messages back to the phone, if the need arises.

This particular concern comes from ignorance of technology, I suspect, rather than from legitimate ethical considerations.

The proper medium

If you need to say more than what you can fit in a text message, then use an alternative means of communication to transmit the information. How simple is that? If you want a formal message, write a letter. If you want to judge the response, tell your client over dinner face-to-face. If you just need to tell them that you filed such-and-such court document, then a simple “I filed such-and-such court document today at so-and-so time” may suffice.

Humans are adaptive. Be human.

Luddites need not apply

There are a lot of lawyers who are technophobic. I don’t have anything to say about this, other than that I am happy to take your clients off your hands.

See advice above.

24-hour service station

I can understand this last concern, that text messaging opens the door to constant and immediate access, or at least the expectation thereof.

I give each of my (paying) clients my cell phone number. I don’t tell them that they are restricted to using it during reasonable hours, but I have never had an issue with a client trying to contact me at an inappropriate time. In fact, I have had only positive and useful experiences with giving out my cell phone number. And, occasionally, even that isn’t enough to get certain clients to get back to me on this or that urgent matter. Go figure.

If you don’t want your clients text messaging you, except perhaps in dire circumstances, then tell them that. If they don’t respect you as a lawyer and follow your instructions, then why are you their lawyer?

Set ground rules and boundaries for your clients.

Unless your jurisdiction expressly forbids text messaging clients, then I can see no reason why a lawyer should not incorporate either the occasional or prolific use of text messaging into his or her practice.

These same points can, I think, be applied to instant messaging, such as through Google Talk (or the Chat feature built into Gmail), MSN Messenger, or a variety of other services. I don’t use instant messaging a whole lot, because I am mostly not at my desk during the day, but I don’t think that attorneys should be closed to the idea of IMing with their clients.

It’s a brave new world. Well, not really; you just haven’t gotten used to reality yet.

Tags: attorneys, client communications, IMing, instant messaging, lawyer, smart phones, text messaging

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 6:04 am and is filed under technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment below, or trackback from your own site.