Apparently, Millennials Are Also Destroying The Official Means Of Legal Communication

Good riddance -- sending correspondence by regular mail is the least efficient means of getting a message to someone,

For those of you who don’t know, the United States Postal Service has an awesome page on why millennials totally do still read printed things.

They actually have a whole series of whitepapers and myth-busting pages about how to capture the attention of the elusive millennial.

So, on top of destroying casual dining chains (and everything else if you believe the news), those damn kids have destroyed the snail mail system too. Good riddance, I say.

Why Using Regular Mail is the Worst

Sending correspondence by regular mail is the least efficient means of getting a message to someone, barely above using birds with cute scrolls taped to their legs. Yet, it remains the official way of doing many things in the law. Mail and personal service are the two universally accepted service options for serving things on opposing counsel. Most states only allow email service if it is by stipulation of the parties.

Just the act of printing a document, filling out the mailing information in Word and printing the envelope, then weighing and adding postage can eat up time. That does not count the one to three days it takes for the letter to be delivered. And let’s talk about the receipt of letters at a law office. Several in-house counsel firms for insurance companies have mailing addresses in the midwest, but physical addresses that are local. So, if I live in California and I want to mail a motion to opposing counsel 10 miles away, it goes to Oklahoma, then Oklahoma logs it and routes it to the firm in California, where it goes to a legal secretary, whose job it is to carefully cut each envelope and leave it on the partner’s chair so he or she could read it. Then, you wait for the reply. Sending letters adds an extra 30 minutes to an hour of unnecessary work for lawyers and staff to getting letters or motions out and delays everything by days.

The state court systems are in a worse bind. Many state courts are facing huge budget cuts and layoffs of personnel. Most state court systems do not have an electronic notification system. Many are just now getting into electronic filing. So, every notice that goes out to lawyers is sent by someone printing things out and addressing envelopes and sending things to the mailing room. It’s a lot of unnecessary work. An afternoon of printing, folding, and mailing could be replaced with a dozen or so mouse clicks.

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