First Impressions Count – Proofread!

I recently received the following email inquiry with the subject line, “Conract Legal Assistant”:

Hello Allison,

It was great reading about your company and how you arrived at becoming an entrepreneur. I am a contract legal assistant. What that mean is, I work for several attorneys providing legal assistance in composing, editing and submitting legal documents.. I would be very interested in aliening myself with you company to provide assistance to attorneys who are overwhelmed with trying to get out there legal correspondence.

Allison, if your company is not in need of the type of service I provide, I would truly appreciate any suggestions or leads you could offer.

Thanking you advance

[first name]

I chose not to respond to the inquiry for several reasons. First and foremost, this person is seeking referrals to attorneys for opportunities as a virtual/contract legal assistant. Her self-described duties include editing legal documents. Yet her subject line includes a spelling error (‘conract’ rather than ‘contract’ legal assistant).

The body of the email is no better, containing several spelling and grammar errors (I count over six in the first paragraph!) I’m not a perfect proofreader – most lawyers aren’t. They rely on their secretaries and legal assistants to make them look good by catching and correcting those kinds of errors. This would-be legal assistant is seeking an employment opportunity and yet she either failed to proofread this short email or her grammar and spelling skills are sorely lacking. Either way, she shot herself in the foot if she expected that this email would lead to any opportunities.

What can lawyers learn from this example? First impressions are important, and although email is often considered a much less formal method of communication, spelling and grammar still count.

Even without the obvious spelling and grammar errors, this email fails to market the author’s services effectively. A few things missing are:

Full name and contact information. Whether you’re seeking employment, information, or connections, your prospect wants to know who you are. Don’t conceal your identity by failing to provide your full name at the very least. Contact information such as a telephone number, email address, and mailing address are also helpful. This prospect’s email address didn’t even provide a clue to her name, and her signature line contained only a first name.

Web address: If your prospect is interested, they’ll want to ‘check you out.’ Make it easy for them. If you’re providing a professional service, chances are that your prospect is going to expect you to have a website that provides information about you and the services you provide.

Qualifications. This email doesn’t provide any information at all about the author’s experience or skills (other than the sloppily drafted email itself). There is no information provided about what kinds of legal documents this individual has prepared, or even what practice areas she has experience with. This is an even more glaring omission because there was no web address or other reference sources available.

Services: What specific services does this individual provide? How does she provide them (i.e. through digital dictation, over the telephone, through the internet)? How does she charge for her services?  How could anyone possibly know from this email whether they might need her services?

Differentiation: What makes this individual worth hiring over someone else that provides the same or similar services?

What’s in it for me? Any time you reach out to a prospect, whether the prospect is a potential referral source, strategic alliance or client, you need to focus on the benefit to the prospect. What’s in it for them? I have clients that could probably use the services of a virtual assistant or contract legal assistant, and I’ve often suggested to clients that they use these kinds of services. But I’ll only refer them to a specific person if I have a good reason to – this email certainly doesn’t provide one, and doesn’t give me any incentive to refer business to her or to ‘align myself’ with her.