In-House Counsel

Selecting Your ‘cc's’

It's not hard to take just a few seconds to consider who's receiving copies of your messages.

By  
on

It’s important that Mr. Big know something.  Maybe he must know that we scheduled the meeting with a government official or a CEO of another company.  Mr. Big won’t be attending the meeting; he just has to know that it’s taking place.  In any event, it’s something important.

So we “cc” Mr. Big on the correspondence:  “The meeting with Jarndyce is set for Thursday, April 25, at 3 p.m. (Eastern).”  Mission accomplished.

Then, the lunacy begins.

Mr. Big is copied on the reply email:  “Summerson isn’t available on Thursday at 3.  Can we move the meeting back by an hour?”

And we inflict on Mr. Big the reply to the reply:  “Blaine could do it then.  But not Darnay.  How about early Friday?”

And on and on and on.

Mr. Big looks at the silly emails and deletes them one after the other, wondering why he’s being copied on all this irrelevant stuff.

Sponsored

Now that you mention it, why is he being copied on all this irrelevant stuff?

Two reasons:

First, people are copying Mr. Big out of laziness.  People read the original message and then “reply all,” not considering whether “all” must really see the reply.

Don’t be lazy.  Don’t inflict unnecessary messages on people who don’t need them.  Especially important people, whose time is precious.

Second, people copy Mr. Big to attract Mr. Big’s attention and show the world that they communicate with Mr. Big.  “The CEO is watching.  Now’s my chance to shine!  I’m going to send a message that includes the CEO, so the CEO sees that I exist!”

Sponsored

Of course, there’s the related opportunity to brag:  “Just this morning, I was sending an email to the CEO and others . . . .”

Don’t do it.

You may in fact attract the CEO’s attention with emails that the CEO doesn’t need to read.  But that isn’t necessarily a good thing.  Better to be known as a person who sends only emails that the recipient should read than to be known as the idiot who mindlessly sends copies of everything to everyone.

Differentiate between things that might matter — the name and qualifications of the arbitrator — and things that matter to fewer, or different, people — whether the arbitrator is available for a conference call on Tuesday at 5.

Send the first email to everyone who cares.  Send the second to everyone who cares.  But recognize that many people might care about the first email and be utterly indifferent to the second.

It’s not hard to take just a few seconds to consider who’s receiving copies of your messages.  The people who do not receive those messages may be just as delighted as the people who do.

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Inside Straight: Advice About Lawyering, In-House And Out, That Only The Internet Could Provide (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

Topics

, ,