The file that is missing its emails
A fee earner goes on leave and a colleague picks up one of their matters. They open the file in the practice management system and find letters, a few attendance notes and a handful of emails from months ago. The rest of the correspondence, including the client's last three emails and the other side's latest offer, is in the absent fee earner's Outlook.
Nobody did anything wrong on purpose. Filing each email felt like a small job to do later, and later never came.
Why filing falls behind
Most practice management systems have an Outlook add-in for filing. It works, but it asks the fee earner to pick the matter from a search box each time, then choose a folder, then confirm. For someone handling a hundred emails a day, that adds up to a lot of clicks, so filing gets batched and then forgotten.
Threads make it worse. Replies to replies, emails copied to several people, and attachments forwarded internally all need filing, and it is unclear who in a team is responsible for filing which ones.
| Email type | Why it goes unfiled |
|---|---|
| Client replies from a personal address | Address not linked to the matter, no reference in subject |
| Other side's emails | Reference is theirs, not yours |
| Internal emails about the matter | Nobody thinks of them as correspondence |
| Emails sent from a phone | Add-in not available on the mobile app |
What an incomplete file costs
When a fee earner is away, colleagues cannot pick up the matter with confidence. When a client complains, the firm may not be able to show what was said. File reviews find gaps, and supervisors cannot supervise what they cannot see.
Searching someone's inbox for the missing correspondence also takes time, and it depends on the inbox still existing after they leave.
How we build email filing that keeps up
- Read the signals: for each email in a fee earner's mailbox, the tool looks at sender and recipient addresses, your matter reference and the other side's reference, the thread it belongs to, and attachments.
- Suggest the matter: it matches those signals to matters in your practice management system and proposes one, showing why (known client address, your reference in the subject, same thread as a filed email).
- One click or no click: in Outlook, the suggested matter appears alongside the email, and filing takes one click. Where your firm allows it, emails in a thread already filed to a matter are filed automatically.
- Team rules: you decide who files what, for example the fee earner files incoming emails and the sender files outgoing ones, so duplicates are avoided.
- Unfiled list: each fee earner sees matter-related emails still unfiled after a period you set, grouped by matter, so catching up is quick.
- Filing record: each filed email is stored with its attachments in your document management system in the right matter folder.
What files look like afterwards
Matter files hold the whole conversation, including the client's latest email and the other side's replies. Cover during holidays becomes a matter of opening the file. Supervisors can see what has been sent. And the job of filing shrinks to a click on most emails and a short list at the end of the week.
When someone leaves, their inbox is not the only place the firm's correspondence lives.
Does your firm do this?
- Colleagues covering a matter have to ask for emails to be forwarded.
- Your filing add-in is available but used inconsistently.
- Matter files are missing recent client emails.
- Leavers' inboxes are kept for fear of losing correspondence.
- File reviews find correspondence gaps.