Do law firms use Gmail?
Many do. What matters is writing from the practice’s own address, filing each email with its client and matter, and making it clear who is replying.
Yes, many do. Plenty of practices, large and small, run their mail on Gmail through Google Workspace, and it does the job well. The question worth asking is not which provider you use but how the practice uses it. Three habits separate mail that serves a practice from mail that slowly works against it.
Write from the practice’s own address
A client who writes to a personal Gmail account is writing to a person, not to your practice. If that person is away, the message waits. If they leave, the history leaves with them. And to a new client, an address on a free domain can read as less settled than one in the practice’s own name.
Use an address on your practice’s domain for client work, and give clients one address for the practice that always reaches somebody, as well as each lawyer’s own. Google Workspace lets you do this while keeping Gmail as the place where you read and write.
File each email with the client and the matter
An inbox sorts mail by when it arrived. A practice needs it sorted by whom it concerns. When a client’s instructions, the other side’s letters and the court’s notices are spread across several people’s inboxes, nobody has the whole picture, and finding one email from last year becomes a search party.
Whatever tools you use, settle on one rule: every email about a matter is filed with that matter and with the client it belongs to. Labels and folders can do this if everyone applies them every time. The test is simple. Could a colleague who has never touched the matter open it and read every email in order?
Make it clear who is replying
Shared mail has its own way of failing. Two people answer the same client with slightly different advice, or each assumes the other has replied and nobody does. Clients notice both.
Decide who owns each client’s mail. When one lawyer hands a matter to another, tell the client, and make sure the new person can see everything that came before. Sign off with a name, not only the practice, so the client always knows who they are dealing with.
Keep the noise out of the way
Newsletters, notifications and junk bury the mail that matters. Filter them away from client correspondence, so that what is left in front of you is the work. A practice that has to dig for a client’s letter will, sooner or later, miss one.
Where Herald fits
Herald puts client mail in the same workspace as your matters. Mail to your practice’s address lands with the client it belongs to, every earlier email with that client is one tap away, and newsletters and junk are kept out of the way.
You can assign each client to whoever is taking them on, keep private notes for the team beside every client, and hand over to a colleague with the whole history going with it. Everyone can see who has which client. Herald is made for practices in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya.