Contact Management 101: So Many Contacts, So Many Ways to Manage Them

While formal contact management may be foreign to younger lawyers, this isn’t necessarily a generational issue. In fact, we now frequently find that even some of the most experienced lawyers are managing their contacts in different ways. The issue also isn’t caused by inattention or idleness. Actually, there are a number of valid reasons why changes in contact management methodologies have been taking place, such as:

• Attorneys are out of the office more often today, so it’s critical to have contacts on their mobile devices where they can easily access them
• Advances in search technology have made it easy to find contacts anywhere, so there is no need to add them to an address book
• Websites like LinkedIn provide access to a vast network of business contacts that can be connected to with just a click
• New software can create contacts from signature blocks of e-mails, so why create a contact card
• Attorneys are busier than ever and entering contacts in a CRM takes time away from the Client work (aka, it’s not a billable activity)