How Lawyers Should Use Smartphones?


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When working with clients, you need to maintain good communication, if you want to satisfy them. You should know how to properly manage expectations. There are tools that you can use to maintain communication and smartphones already become the most common way to do that. However, not all lawyers understand how to use their smartphone in the best possible manner. Smartphones are essentially handheld computers with lightweight operating systems that allow you to do many things that you normally do on laptops, such as checking email and managing social media accounts. It means that communicating with clients doesn’t always involve voice calls and standard text messages. Smartphones allow you to use various methods to achieve that.

When lawyers are still unfamiliar with smartphone technology, they should keep things simple. Android and iOS should be easy to use and manageable in their basic forms. They should consider whether those expensive smartphones with fancy, gimmicky features are really useful for daily activities, if all they need is to communicate with people using voice calls, text messages, instant messaging, email and social media through the smartphone. When using smartphones, lawyers should avoid being rude with that. Many are sensible enough not to check on their latest email during court session, but it is important to silence the phone completely. So, it is possible for the phone to fetch latest information from various sources without being intrusive with the usual notification noises.

You should use your smartphone at the most appropriate times and way.  It is important for you to be particularly considerate with what you do. You need to know whether it is the most appropriate time to call your client. As an example, many people don’t want to be contacted for work-related things during weekend. You should know about the degree of importance of message that you want to send. If you don’t want to be intrusive, it is better to rely on text-based information, such as email and social media, which can be accessed later by clients during their work hours. If the information is critical and need to be delivered very quickly, you need to be careful and express your apology for disturbing the client in the most inappropriate time.

Lawyers should be quite sensible with their use of smartphones. However, many older lawyers refuse to use smartphones and they prefer old ones that only offer voice calls and text messages. This is understandable because mobile phone itself is already considered cutting edge for their standard. However, it is important for them to go outside of their comfort zone, because smartphones could really make them more productive. They will be able to obtain more information and keep with others in the industry. Last minute information cannot be obtained from newspaper or TV. Often, we need to monitor social media and instant messaging intently to get the latest update from the courtroom or the investigation sites. Without proper use of smartphones, you won’t be able to achieve that and you won’t be able to keep up with others.