Resource Library / SOP 05 · Physical Mail
Operations · Full guide
Physical Mail
Paper still carries the highest-stakes items a law office receives: court notices, orders, discovery responses, insurance correspondence, checks. It also arrives on the day the person who normally opens it is out. This procedure exists so that day is uneventful.
Process owner
Front desk or office admin
Reviewed by
Firm owner
Applies to
All incoming and outgoing mail
Review cycle
Every 12 months
Section one
The least glamorous procedure, and one of the most decisive
Nobody sets out to build a career around mail handling. But a meaningful share of malpractice exposure in small firms traces back to a document that arrived, was set down somewhere, and was never calendared. An order with a deadline is not dangerous because it is complicated. It is dangerous because it looks like every other envelope.
The risk concentrates on ordinary days. Someone covers the front desk for an afternoon. Mail is stacked neatly for the person who normally handles it, who is in a deposition, then out sick, then catching up. Four days pass. Inside the stack is a notice with a fourteen-day response window.
Electronic filing has reduced the volume without removing the hazard. What still arrives on paper is disproportionately consequential: process, orders from courts that have not gone electronic, insurance correspondence, medical records, original signed documents, and checks.
The procedure is short. Open on a schedule, date-stamp on receipt, separate anything with a deadline before anything else happens, calendar it immediately, then scan, route, and file. The order of those steps is the entire point.
Section two
Purpose and scope
Purpose
Ensure that every item of physical mail is opened, dated, recorded, and routed on the day it arrives; that any deadline it carries is calendared before the document is filed; and that mail is processed every business day regardless of who is present.
In scope
Incoming mail and deliveries of all kinds including courier and hand delivery, date-stamping, scanning and naming, routing, deadline capture, cheque handling, outgoing mail, proof of service, and retention of originals.
Out of scope
Electronic service and court e-filing notifications, which follow their own procedure and are calendared the same way. Email management. The substantive handling of whatever the document requires.
Section three
The daily procedure
Eight steps, in this order. The sequence is load-bearing: deadlines are captured before filing, not after.
01
Mail owner
Open on a fixed daily schedule
Mail is collected and opened at a stated time each business day — commonly first thing, or on arrival if delivery is later. Not "when there is a moment." The schedule is what makes the rest of the procedure reliable and what makes a lapse visible.
02
Mail owner
Date-stamp every item on receipt
Every document receives the date it was physically received, before anything else happens to it. Where a deadline runs from receipt, this stamp is the evidence of when the clock started. Keep the envelope where the postmark or delivery date may matter.
03
Mail owner
Separate deadline-bearing documents immediately
Before scanning, before routing, before filing. Anything from a court, anything served by a party, anything stating a date by which something must be done goes into a single physical location — a red folder, a designated tray — and is dealt with next. Everything else waits.
04
Mail owner + attorney
Calendar the deadline before filing the document
The date goes into the firm's calendar system with the matter, the nature of the deadline, and at least one internal reminder well ahead of it. Where the response period depends on rules the admin cannot determine, the item goes to the responsible attorney the same day to have the date set. A scanned order nobody diarized is worse than an unopened envelope.
05
Mail owner
Scan to the correct matter with the firm's naming convention
Scan legibly, in full, including the envelope where it matters, and file to the matter using the standard name format: date received, document type, party. A document nobody can find later has been received but not captured.
06
Mail owner
Route to the responsible person the same day
The responsible attorney or paralegal is notified the day it arrives, by whatever method the firm uses consistently. Routing is recorded so the item cannot be in the state of having been delivered to nobody.
07
Mail owner + second person
Handle checks on a separate path
Any payment received is recorded on receipt by the person opening the mail and verified by a second person, then deposited to the correct account — operating or trust — the same or next business day. Never left in a drawer, never carried home, never deposited without a record. Two sets of eyes on incoming funds is basic internal control, and in a very small firm the second person may be the owner.
08
Mail owner
Log completion of the day
A short daily record that mail was processed, by whom, with anything escalated noted. On a day with unusual volume or an urgent item, this is the record that shows what happened.
Section four
Situations that need a decided answer
Five cases that come up a few times a year and cause disproportionate trouble when the answer is improvised.
The mail owner is absent
A named backup processes mail, and the standard is unchanged. Mail is processed every business day, not every day the usual person is in. This is the single most important line in the procedure.
Privileged material sent in error
Stop reading, do not distribute, notify the responsible attorney immediately. Your jurisdiction almost certainly has a rule governing what happens next; the attorney applies it. Handling this well is both an obligation and a reputational matter.
Misdirected or ambiguous mail
Mail for a former client, an unidentifiable matter, or another firm entirely. Log it, do not discard it, and route it to the owner for a decision. Never forward client-related mail to a third party without instruction.
Originals that must be preserved
Signed agreements, wills, notarized documents, and exhibits are scanned and then stored physically in a designated secure location, with the location recorded on the matter so it can be found without searching.
Hand and courier deliveries
Treated exactly as mail, with the additional record of who delivered it and when. Personal service commonly arrives this way and starts a clock immediately.
Section five
Outgoing mail
What leaves the office needs the same discipline, because proving something was sent matters as much as receiving it.
Daily dispatch time
A stated cut-off, so nobody assumes an item posted that did not
Method by document type
Which items require certified, registered, or tracked delivery, decided in advance
Proof of service
Prepared and filed to the matter for anything requiring it, before dispatch
Certified mail log
Receipt numbers recorded against the matter, return cards filed on arrival
Copy to file
Every outgoing item is captured to the matter, not just the ones that seem important
Address verification
Checked against the current record, particularly for clients who have moved
Enclosure check
A second look that what the letter says is enclosed actually is
Postage and cost record
Recorded against the matter where it is a client disbursement
Section six
Where firms get this wrong
Five patterns, all of them ordinary, one of them capable of ending a practice.
No named backup
Mail waits for a person rather than being processed by the firm. Every serious mail failure we have seen involves an absence nobody planned for.
Filing before calendaring
The document is scanned, named correctly, filed correctly, and its deadline exists nowhere. The file looks immaculate.
No date stamp
Nobody can establish when a document was received, which matters precisely when it matters most.
Checks handled by one person
No second record, no same-day deposit. This is how both honest errors and dishonest ones go undetected in small offices.
Scanned copies nobody can find
No naming convention, so documents are captured into a system and functionally lost. Consistency in naming is worth more than any software.
Section seven
Adapting it to your firm
Five decisions before this becomes your procedure.
Name the owner and the backup. By role, in writing, and tell both of them. This is the decision that makes the rest work.
Fix the daily time. One time, every business day, that mail is opened and processed. Publish it.
Write your naming convention. An actual format with an actual example, applied by everyone. Date-type-party is a common and sufficient pattern.
Decide who sets deadlines. Which dates an administrator may calculate and calendar, and which must go to an attorney. When in doubt the answer is the attorney, the same day.
Set your funds-handling control. Who records incoming payments, who verifies, and the deposit timeline. In a solo practice, decide how you will create a second record even when there is no second person.
This is the shortest procedure in the library and the one that most rewards being followed literally. Run it for thirty days exactly as written before deciding anything about it needs to change.
Next
Work through this with someone who has done it
Every attorney and law student who qualifies is paired with a free mentor: a firm owner, an operations expert, a finance expert, or a marketing expert. Bring this guide to the first call.
This guide is educational material published free of charge by the Law Firm Innovation Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, EIN 42-2464496. It is not legal, ethical, tax, or accounting advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Professional conduct rules, trust accounting requirements, limitations periods, and procedural rules vary by jurisdiction; every reader is responsible for conforming their own practice to the authority that governs it. If you find an error or something incomplete for your jurisdiction, tell us and we will revise the page.