Writing Useful Emails

Most of us are familiar with writing emails to friends and family, but writing emails in a professional setting is a different beast. Emails are a staple of law firm communication. On any given day, the inboxes of clients, partners, and associates are likely bursting at the seams with email. Against this backdrop, this course teaches how to determine when email is the right way to communicate and how to craft those emails to be as useful as possible for the recipient. Beyond the email horror stories to avoid, this course teaches the best practices that make for productive emailing.

Training outcomes

Learn to write emails that are easy for the recipient to parse and act on.
Learn to avoid common emailing pitfalls.
Learn what extra steps to take before and after emailing to make sure items don't fall through the cracks.

Made in collaboration with

Every email attorneys send acts as a writing sample to their colleagues and clients, and plays a vital role in building each attorney's professional reputation. Making a small time investment early in one's career to think actively about how to optimize email pays enormous dividends over the course of a legal career."

Ed Lintz
Legal Writing Trainer and Coach
Ready to File Writing

Writing useful emails begins with considering how to communicate most usefully for your audience

We begin this course by teaching the learner to intentionally consider the best way to accomplish their communication goals before sending an email. Then, the learner will learn steps to take before sending an email to make sure the email goes to the right people, in the context of the right email thread, and with a subject line that helps usefully focus the recipient's attention. From there, the learner will learn to structure and organize recipient-friendly emails, while avoiding common pitfalls.

Learn by making mistakes in realistic, no-stakes exercises

As is always the case with Praktio courses, learners learn not just through watching and listening to practical lessons and examples but also through doing practical, realistic exercises—not to test, but to provide opportunities to apply and practice, while receiving immediate feedback on everything.

Combine With a Live Workshop!

Add this course to a Ready to File Writing workshop, led by legal writing guru Ed Lintz

Check out Ed's Workshops

Build a curriculum

Pair with these other offerings to build out your practical, online, interactive curriculum.

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In case you were wondering

Modules outline

Before the Body of the Email

Is Email the Best Mode?
Is There an Existing Thread?
Include the Right People
Careful with Predictive Software
Careful with BCC
Subject Lines
CAUTION! with IMPORTANT! Tags

The Body of the Email

General Structure
Provide Relevant Context
Maximize Scannability
What's the Ask?
When Responding, Be Fully Responsive
Before Sending, Is It Ripe?
Keep It Professional
Take the Extra Step
After Sending

Important details

CLE: Not currently available.

Duration: You will have 1 year from the date of purchase to access and complete your online course materials. On average, it takes about 30 minutes to complete the whole course; however, learners get to decide how much time to spend on each exercise and module.

Accessing: Following checkout, you will receive an email providing you with access to your online course materials.

Compatibility: Please use Chrome on a PC or Mac computer.

Reference Materials: As part of this purchase, you will also receive an e-book and one-page checklist (each of which you may download or print for your use and later reference).

We Don't Share Your Scores! Praktio does not share user performance data (e.g., "scores") with anyone, including employers (e.g., if you're an associate taking this training at a law firm). The only information shared with employers who purchase this training for their employees is progress data (e.g., how much of the course you have completed by when).