I Can’t Practice Law Via Text
I know, I know, EVERYONE loves texting. It’s convenient, it’s only as intrusive as the recipient allows it to be, it’s quiet. There are several good things about texting. And yes, I text friends and family. It’s hard to beat it for immediate but subtle contact.
Having said that, I cannot practice law through texting. I just can’t. I understand you want to ask a quick question, I understand you want a quick response, but I’m going to explain to you why it’s just not appropriate in the attorney/client context:
- When you text your doctor, what do they say? They don’t say anything because you don’t text your doctor. I’m your lawyer. Same thing.
- To explore the above point, why do you think that is the case? Both doctors and lawyers are HEAVILY regulated professions. We have watchdog groups and governmental organizations waiting to pounce on us when/if we make a mistake. People hate us (which is a whole separate blog post) so we have to try to be perfect. The problem with giving professional advice via text is that it’s too gosh darn small. The screen is small, the keys are small, and it’s a format that is made for convenience, NOT complexity. What we have to explain to our clients can be subtle, and it’s simply too tempting to cut corners on texts because they’re supposed to be short and fast. Believe me, the best lawyer answers are NEVER short NOR fast.
- Let’s get back to the size thing…it’s progressively a pain (literally) for me to see texts and type with tiny keys as we get older. Please just let me use my big computer screen and keyboard!
- Email is SUPERIOR IN EVERY WAY. First, you can see it on your phone just as well, if not better than texts. Second, emails are trackable and searchable in a way that texts simply aren’t. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to go back through a thread to see what a client wrote (or to show that I wrote something) and doing that through text is just really not possible. Third, texts get lost in the morass of memes and grocery lists and honey-do stuff that come through my phone constantly. If your “urgent” text (that could have been a phone call if it were so urgent…) might get buried below that stuff and I’ll never see it (because I’m not looking for it, because I asked you not to text me in the first place). That’s not my fault. Emails, on the other hand, show up highlighted in my inbox and are gloriously obvious. I can see them, so I’ll respond to them!
If you’re running late to a meeting and choose to text me that you’re late instead of calling, fine. But otherwise, just call me! Or email! If you REALLY just love sending messages with your phone, then use your email app on your phone. It’s really not that bad. You may not be an “email person” and you may see email as 20th century, but I’m here to tell you, I just can’t practice law via text, so please understand why I simply can’t rely on that medium as a method of communication.
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