Informal Written Communication Skills for New Attorneys in a Digital Age: Drafting Emails, Texts, Instant Messages
Knowing Your Audience, Creating Persuasive Content, Selecting the Right Platform, Protecting Privilege
Recording of a 60-minute CLE video webinar
This CLE webinar will instruct new lawyers on the art of drafting clear and concise informal communications, including emails, texts, and instant messages (IMs), that are audience-appropriate and persuasive. The panel will also address privilege and ethical considerations.
Outline
- Pre-drafting considerations
- Understanding your audience
- Organizing your ideas
- Selecting the right medium (email, text, IM):
- Advantages and disadvantages of each
- When to use which type of medium
- Setting client expectations
- Drafting a persuasive message
- Tone
- Clear, concise, and to the point
- Word choice
- Legal vs. nonlegal terminology
- Slang, emojis, acronyms, and idioms
- Level of explanation required
- Privilege and ethical considerations
- Review and revision
- Practitioner takeaways
Benefits
The panel will review these and other key considerations:
- What pre-drafting considerations should be made before drafting any informal communication and how do these differ based on the audience?
- Under what circumstances should certain methods of communication be used? Be avoided?
- What ethical and privilege issues should lawyers consider when selecting a method of communication and before drafting the communication?
- What are best practices for drafting a persuasive message?
Faculty
Jeffrey Cunningham
Attorney
McAngus Goudelock & Courie
Mr. Cunningham’s practice focus runs the gamut of professional liability exposures but with a particular emphasis... | Read More
Mr. Cunningham’s practice focus runs the gamut of professional liability exposures but with a particular emphasis on lawyers. He defends lawyers and acts as outside General Counsel to solo to mid-sized law firms across the U.S. For over a decade, Mr. Cunningham has defended industry professionals in a wide range of professional liability, ethics and professional disciplinary matters. His extensive background in civil litigation includes commercial disputes, varied malpractice claims, D&O liability, employment and labor law, catastrophic personal injury, premises liability and products liability. With an emphasis on simple systems of risk management, Mr. Cunningham brings a holistic approach of protecting his clients before problems occur. He produces a weekly newsletter and daily blog, Point One: A Bite of Ethics a Day Keeps Legal Malpractice Claims Away, as well as the world’s only ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct-based meme page, The Model-Rule-Meme-A-Day. A life-long learner and teacher, Mr. Cunningham presents CLE courses on varying topics of law firm risk management and ethics.
Closeto be announced.