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Every firm has that recurring email. Two words, no punctuation, arriving at 9:14 on a Monday: "Any update?" We sat down with a senior litigation paralegal, ten years in at a small Ontario firm, who decided she was done answering it one message at a time. She agreed to talk on the condition we did not name the firm.
What the Any Update Email Really Means
You say the "any update" email drove you up the wall. What was actually going on?
For a long time I read it as impatience. Like the client thought we were sitting on the file. Then I started actually asking people when they came in for signings, and it was never impatience. It was fear. They did not know if the thing was still moving. Silence, to a client, reads as something went wrong.
Think about it from their side. They hired us for something that matters enormously to them. Then they hear nothing for three weeks because we are waiting on opposing counsel or a registry. On our end that is a normal file doing normal things. On their end there is no way to tell whether it is moving at all.
The email is not "hurry up." The email is "please tell me I did not make a mistake trusting you."
The First Change That Cut the Volume
What did you change first?
I mapped out the milestones for our three most common matter types. Not tasks, milestones. The moments a client would recognize as progress. For a real estate file that might be: retainer received, requisitions sent, title reviewed, closing scheduled, keys. Five points. I wrote one plain sentence for each, in advance.
Then I made a rule for myself. When a file hits a milestone, the client hears from me that same day, before they think to ask. Short. No legalese. "Hi Priya, we sent our requisitions to the other side today. We usually hear back within two weeks. I will let you know the moment we do."
Tip. Write the milestone messages once, per matter type, and keep them as templates. The point is not to sound scripted. It is to remove the friction that makes you postpone sending the update at all.
Did that actually reduce the emails?
The "any update" emails dropped by more than half within a couple of months, honestly. And the ones that still came were better. Instead of vague anxiety I would get a real question I could answer, because the client already knew where the file stood.
How Often Is Too Often to Update
Was there a risk of over-communicating? Nobody wants twelve emails.
Yes, and I got that wrong at first. I went too far and started narrating every small step. Clients found it noisy. One told me she stopped reading because most of it did not need a response, so she missed the one that did.
The fix was to separate two things. A progress update is "here is where we are, you do not need to do anything." An action request is "I need something from you by Friday." I started labelling them differently in the subject line so nobody had to guess.
| Update type | When it goes out | What the client does |
|---|---|---|
| Milestone reached | Same day it happens | Nothing, just read it |
| Waiting period starts | When the clock starts | Nothing, note the timeframe |
| Action needed | As early as possible | Reply or send documents |
Once the categories were clear, people relaxed. They knew a "milestone" email was good news they could skim, and an "action" email was the one to open right away.
Handling the Cases With No News
The hardest one. What do you do on a file where genuinely nothing is happening?
That is where most of us go quiet, and it is the worst instinct. I set a floor: even on a stalled file, the client hears from me at least once a month, even if the message is that we are still waiting.
The key is to make the waiting concrete. Do not say "no update." Say what you are waiting for, who you are waiting on, and roughly when you expect movement. "We are still waiting on the assessment. The office told me their backlog runs about six weeks. I have your file flagged and I will chase them at week four." Now the client knows what is happening and approximately when to expect news.
Note. A "we are still waiting" message takes ninety seconds and prevents the frantic call that costs you twenty. It also creates a small record that you were on top of it, which matters if a limitation period or a deadline is ever in question.
How do you remember to send those on a quiet file?
A recurring reminder on the file. Some firms use their case system to surface it, ours uses A1 CMS so the follow-up sits right on the matter and I am not relying on memory. Whatever the tool, the discipline is the same: the update is scheduled, not remembered.
What Clients Said Once the Chasing Stopped
Did clients actually notice?
They noticed in a way that surprised me. Nobody says "thanks for the proactive communications workflow." What they say is "I never have to wonder what is going on with my file," and they say it to the lawyers, and to their friends.
The clients I never heard from anymore were the ones who trusted us the most. The paralegal we interviewed
Any advice for someone starting this on Monday?
Start with one matter type. Pick your most common file, write your five milestone sentences, and commit to sending them the day each one happens. You will feel the pressure drop within a month, and you will stop dreading your inbox on Monday morning.
If you want to go further, a shared space where clients can see status themselves takes even more pressure off, and it pairs well with this habit rather than replacing it. There is more on that in our piece on setting up a client portal, and on the broader balance in being responsive without burning out.
The lesson underneath all of it is simple and a little humbling. The "any update" email was never a demand for speed. It was a request for reassurance, and reassurance is cheap to give when you send it before it is asked for. Remove the reason to chase and clients stop chasing. Your inbox gets quieter and the relationship stays warmer. For more on the client side of practice, the rest of our client experience writing is a good place to keep reading.
