Yet our brains, Carlton suggests, have yet to catch up with such technological advances. Most of us don t have the capacity to process 100 messages a day, he said. And the messages, attorneys say, often cannot wait. Gone are the days when a secretary would politely explain to a client that the attorney was in a conference and unreachable. Gone, too, are the days when an attorney could respond to a client by letter the next day, some say.
Clients now expect a much quicker response.
Silicon Valley attorney Mark Radcliffe, a partner at Gray Cary, agrees. In addition, he says, the ease of exchanging electronic documents has made people more willing to negotiate harder on things and accommodate last-minute changes. In one recent venture deal, Radcliffe s negotiations with Japanese multinationals stretched into the night via e-mail to multiple locations in Japan, New York and California. The deal was set to close the next day, he said, but time zone differences demanded that he get a wire transfer authorization and finalize the deal that night. Attorneys, too, note the enhanced ability to communicate with each other in cases involving far-flung, multidisciplinary teams of lawyers or with multiple plaintiffs.