I made a script yesterday-a little piece of code for a Google Spreadsheet.
It allows me to interrogate my Gmail account and identify
- How many message threads there are with a particular label
- The dates of those threads
This is of great practical use to me as it will now allow me to see precisely how many email exchanges I had with a particular client and the dates. The benefit of this is more accurate tracking of the amount of time spent on one client or matter, and more details/particulars for the bill of costs to be eventually furnished to the client.
Let me give you one practical example.
I had one individual who emailed me so frequently that it appeared she expected me to give her an education in Irish law, by email, for free. The person was from outside the jurisdiction, but the transaction was taking place in Ireland.
It appeared that the individual was not satisfied to trust us to get on with the work in the normal way but appeared to see it as a good opportunity to obtain a free legal education, too.
Eventually, when I went to charge the client, I was constrained by my original quotation, not realising or anticipating how much time would be spent replying to emails.
And there was so many that it would have been counterproductive and cost inefficient to spend the time going through my Gmail to identify the dates.
My script solves this problem.
All I must do is insert the correct label into my script and it will spit out the number of threads and dates for that particular label in seconds in a Google sheet.
Any disputes about the number of emails or dates can easily be dealt with.