In today’s online world, people expect to get immediate answers to their questions. Potential clients message you on your website or send you an email and, if you don’t respond quickly, they’ll move on to the next attorney on the google search list. In this article, we’ll talk about making sure you’re notified when a prospect sends you an email so you can react quickly.

Let’s use the scenario where a prospective client sends you an email or completes a contact form on your website. Yes, you can read your email on your smartphone but this is a situation when you’d like to have a text message sent to your phone as an alert.

Typically, you check your emails and then respond when you can. The problem is response time: you might check your mail sporadically outside of business hours and the time lapse can cost you a client.

What if prospect emails and contact form submissions came to your phone as a text message too so you could respond immediately to those messages that warranted it? Let’s make that happen!

First, we’ll talk about the free email-to-text service that’s available with virtually all cell carriers. The process works via an email to SMS Gateway; your Gateway email address is specific to your cellular carrier. For example, to send an email that is received as a text to a Verizon customer, the address is <phone_number>@vtext.com; AT&T is <phone_number>@txt.att.net. You can see a list of all carriers and their Gateways here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_gateway.

Text messages of 160 characters or less are best for this situation because they come to your phone as a single text message. Try it yourself on your own phone: send an email to your phone number via your carrier’s Gateway; remove the email signature and any disclaimers in your email to keep the message short. You’ll see it in your texts.

Now, let’s set up your website contact form so you get a text when someone submits a form. I’m going to presume that your contact form sends you an email when someone completes it. To get a notification when someone submits a form, add your cell phone’s SMS Gateway address to the contact form settings and you’re all set. Some website forms allow multiple notifications; if that’s your case, make a custom notification that sends a brief text to your SMS Gateway with just a few words that will prompt you to check your mail and reach out to your prospect.

Another approach is to create a custom email forwarder or alias for prospect emails. You can create a custom email address that forwards to your SMS Gateway (something like info@). Think of the forwarder as your private distribution list that includes the SMS Gateway, as well as any other email recipients you need to add. Once you set it up, be sure to test it so you know it works when a prospect contacts you.

Using this text message notification method can help you be responsive when a prospect needs you. I hope it works well for you.

In this article, we’ll learn some things to make your life with Microsoft Word easier. I’m a big fan of shortcut keys because I don’t have to move my hands from the keyboard to the mouse to do simple, basic tasks.  I also like to take advantage of Word’s power.  Here are a few of my favorites.

Perhaps the most important shortcut you can memorize and use is control-s, the save command. Hold the ‘ctrl’ key down and then press ‘s’ to save your document. It does the same thing as clicking the disk icon on the toolbar and selecting the ‘save’ function on the ‘file’ menu. How often should you press ctrl-s? Early and often!

One of the most powerful time-savers in Word is the AutoCorrect function. You type a few letters, press the space bar and Word substitutes what you’ve set up in AutoCorrect for those few letters. This is a boon for those words you have to type repeatedly like your company name, your own name, and common business terms. It’s also a winner for those words that are often mistyped - did you ever notice that Word changes ‘teh’ to ‘the’ for you? That’s AutoCorrect at work.  Let’s learn how to do it!

In the Tools menu, select AutoCorrect Options, then select the AutoCorrect tab.  There, you can see the list of AutoCorrect words that Microsoft gives you out of the box. Scroll through the list so you know what’s there.

To add one of your own, type the shortcut in the box labeled “Replace” and the full text you want in the “With” box. Be careful what you choose as your shortcut. For example, if you make ‘cc’ mean ‘country club”, you’ll have trouble when you copy someone with cc: in Word!

When you’ve added a few shortcuts, press OK and try them!  Here are a few that I have in my list:

• sys – system
• rpt – report
• ccl – County Clerk
• req – requirement
• reqs – requirements
• vty – Very Truly Yours,
• sele – selection
• rec – recommend
• recn – recommendation

Once you start using them, you’ll remember them all.

Here is a short list of keyboard shortcuts for often-used Word functions. Remember, Word gives you many ways to do the same thing: clicking icons on the tool bar, using the menus, and pressing function keys in conjunction with the alt, shift or ctrl keys. Here are some of my favorite shortcuts; select the text you want to affect and press (on a Mac, use the command key instead of control):

• ctrl-b: bold
• ctrl-i: italics
• ctrl-u: underline
• ctrl-z: undo
• ctrl-y: redo
• ctrl-q: remove paragraph formatting
• ctrl-c: copy
• ctrl-v: paste
• ctrl-x: cut

and some other shortcuts

• ctrl-s: save (but you know that one!)
• ctrl-a: select all the text in the document
• ctrl-e: center text
• shift-F3: toggle case
• ctrl-1: single space
• ctrl-2: double space
• ctrl-5: 1 ½ space
• ctrl-enter: page break
• ctrl-p: print

Enjoy your new-found timesavers.

Most of us are very facile using the keyboard when we write and draft, whether it's doing long documents like briefs or writing quick emails. Whether you use a Windows PC or a Mac, your computer can be used to transcribe your spoken words into typed text without adding any additional software.  You’re ready to start talking to your computer now!

Dictation is baked into the Windows 10 operating system on PC's and the Mac OS on Apple devices so there's nothing to download or install to use it.  To start dictating on a PC, select the text field where you want to ‘type’ and press the Windows logo key and the H key to open the dictation toolbar. To start dictating on a Mac, select the field and press the function (fn) key twice; you’ll see the microphone icon near the field to show your Mac is ready to listen and transcribe.  You may need to modify some software settings on your computer to enable dictation – you might need to allow the software to access to the microphone, for example.  Here are two links to help you get started:

• Use voice recognition in Windows 10 setup: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4027176
• Dictate your messages and documents on Mac: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-dictation-mh40584/mac

The Microsoft Office 365 platform also includes a dictation function and it works great on both PC and Mac, as well as on phones and tablets. In a Word doc or in an Outlook mail message, for example, you’ll see the dictation button in the Home toolbar;  click it to start your device listening and typing for you. The function works well on the web-based Office 365 implementation as well as the downloaded and installed version. Make sure you have the latest software version to ensure accuracy and good performance.

With Siri on iPhones and Google Assistant on Android, many of us have become well versed in speaking to our phones so they type on our behalf. Alexa and Google Home have also helped us improve our dictation skills when using our voices to say what we want and mean what we say. Dictating to our computers is easy to do and can improve the efficiency of our workflow and the effectiveness of our writing.

Like most things, practice is important.  Once you start dictating regularly, you'll get used to including punctuation as you speak as well as organizing your thoughts as you anticipate using the technology to type for you. I rely on dictation so often now that I prefer to talk to my computer as opposed to type on it. Once I've gotten the majority of my thoughts in the document, I can move the paragraphs around and edit the content using cut and paste and drag and drop. I find it faster and easier than typing; this article, for example, was totally dictated.