Book Review: Letters for Lawyers

By Andy Havens, Marketing Management Consultant and co-founder of Sanestorm Marketing. Visit www.sanestorm.com for free marketing tools, articles and our non-newsletter.  He can be reached at 1.877.SSTORM1 and andyhavens@sanestorm.com.

Back in 1974, when I was in the third grade, I entered and won the Wolf Pack heat of the Boy Scouts' Pinewood Derby. This was deeply meaningful to me, as I had otherwise demonstrated a complete lack of talent in any other scouting endeavor, with the possible exception of starting fires. To this day, I'm not sure how building a car out of a block of pre-cut pine prepares a boy for a life of adventure, but I've got the trophy, damn it, and I'm a-gonna keep it!

What does this have to do with the book, Letters for Lawyers: Essential Communications for Clients, Prospects, and Others. 2nd Edition, by Thomas E. Kane? Well, when I was a boy (insert period harmonica music), the pinewood derby "chassis" was a block of wood. It was the right size, and that was that. All else had to be carved, bored, planed, sanded, glued and pegged by the scout. Recently, however, I was in a craft store and saw that the approved line of Pinewood Derby starter-kits provide a much more finished looking set of materials; car bodies pre-cut to look like specific makes, plastic spoilers, fins, even antennae. I imagine the finished cars look much nicer than the blue-and-red-striped chunk I submitted... but I bet scouts who win with a pre-made model feel less of a sense of accomplishment than did I.

Pre-made set of pieces 

Which is how I felt upon reading through Letters for Lawyers. In one way, it was nice to see a pre-made set of pieces that could get you started on almost any epistle more quickly. However, the final deliverable will not be a product of your mind, unless you put some significant effort into customization.

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Don't get me wrong; I will probably use some of these letters as a starting point for my own correspondence. They are all well written and demonstrate excellent grammar and standard style. But, as you would expect - and maybe even demand - they are almost entirely without character or personality. You have to add those ingredients yourself.

The book is separated into six chapters for communication with:

1. Clients and Referral Sources
2. Employees
3. Prospective Employees
4. Prospective Clients
5. Other Contacts
6. The Media.

Variety is best point

The variety of letters overall, though, is the book's best point. The mere idea of some of the letters may spur some communication in areas never considered before. For example, the "Regret Client Employee Resignation" letter. Communicating with a departing client employee might never have occurred to some readers (like me). Not a bad idea. The "Martindale Hubbell 'AV' Rating Request Letter" also falls into this category; I didn't know you could do that.

What frightens me, though, is that there may actually be people out there for whom "'Get Well' to Sick Employee," may be a new concept. Some of the letters, like that and "Employment Promotion," though, may be new to some readers. And that's where, again, the variety is most helpful. In fact, just a perusal of the table of contents might be enough to light the "Oh, yeah," bulb for someone and suggest that additional communication might be well worth the effort. On the other hand, there are letters that I can't ever see using; "Agreeing to Interview," for example. From my experience with the media, by the time an actual letter got to the media source, the need for the interview would be over. This is something I have handled by phone and email exactly 100% of the time.

It's always easier to edit a first draft than to write from scratch. If, like me, you'd like a gentle push to get past the inertia of a blank page, this book will help. Be prepared, though, to put in some time on personalization... unless you don't mind your letters sounding, well, like they came out of a book.