It’s that time of year again! With the holidays fast approaching, many in-house attorneys and their teams will be looking to carve out some extra time during the festive season to spend with loved ones. However, this also means that it’s just as important as ever to keep a check on incoming correspondence from outside parties.

The added pressure of the holidays can often lead to heightened emotions and potentially strained interpersonal relationships. It’s therefore vital that legal professionals maintain an efficient and reliable method for communicating with clients throughout this period. After all, both parties need to be kept equally informed if your business is going to remain productive and stress-free over the next couple of weeks. Here are our top tips for effectively handling client communication over the holidays:

Make emailing part of your holiday routine

one of the ways that you can show your clients that you care about their business is by sending them holiday greetings and other messages throughout the season. You should send an email or two on a regular basis — at least once every few months. This helps remind people that you exist and keeps them up-to-date on what’s going on with their case.

Be sure to personalize the message. Don’t just send out generic emails with stock text or boilerplate greetings. Instead, write something unique and meaningful to your client — or even better, let them write something themselves. It shows that you understand their business and take ownership of their customer experience.

Don’t forget about social media!

If social media is important for your client, keep an eye out for opportunities in this space as well as during the holidays. Social media allows you to reach more people than traditional channels like email and phone calls do, so use it wisely!

If you are a lawyer who handles communications with clients, there are some things you can do to ensure that your clients receive the information they need.

Write an email reminder for important emails. This is especially important if you have any important deadlines that you know will be missed or if your client has any questions about pending cases. Make sure that your clients know about the holiday season and how it will affect communication between them and their legal team. Be prepared for last-minute phone calls from clients who have questions or concerns about their cases.

Be transparent about your process

As lawyers, we all know how important it is to treat our clients with respect and professionalism. But we also know that our client’s needs for information and communication change during the holidays. We are often inundated with requests for information or meetings, which means that we may not have the time or resources to meet them all. We also want to ensure that our clients feel comfortable with us as they navigate a challenging time. That’s why I recommend being transparent about your process of dealing with clients during the holidays:

Be honest about your schedule

Clients who know ahead of time that you will be busy can plan accordingly and give you more time off when they need it most.

Set expectations upfront

Be clear with your client about when they can expect a response from you and what will happen if they don’t hear back within a reasonable amount of time after sending an email or calling for an appointment. You may want to provide an emergency contact number in case something urgent comes up unexpectedly on your end during the holiday season

Automate your practice

A lawyer who struggles to delegate often worries that leaving a task to someone else means it will not get done the way the lawyer prefers.

Automation tools provide an efficient and sensible response to that challenge. By automating tasks using software designed specifically for lawyers, you can standardize tasks, which keeps errors and variations from your preferred output to a minimum. Additionally, it eliminates time wasted on duplicative effort. Automation can be done for all the repetitive tasks and saving countless hours bringing out better productivity.


Summing Up

The holiday season is one of the busiest times for attorneys. With several family members and friends visiting, it’s important to ensure that your business is kept running smoothly and efficiently. In order to stay on top of incoming correspondence, you need to make sure that you have a reliable method for communicating with clients. Here are some tips for how to effectively handle communication over the holidays: When planning your holiday break, it’s essential that you communicate with all those who will be visiting in order to ensure everything runs smoothly. With several people in your home or office coming and going during the festive season, it can be difficult to keep a check on incoming correspondence from outside parties. In order to stay on top of incoming emails and letters, you need an efficient way of communicating with clients throughout this period.