Is email dead, dying or doing just fine? | Altlaw Blog

Written by Altlaw | Jan 30, 2020 11:50:00 AM

The suggestion that emails are in decline has been commonly touted for quite some years now. As litigators spend a significant proportion of their time collating, searching, organising and interpreting emails by the thousands and millions this topic is surely one of interest. 

Do we still need to collect email? 

Having read a multitude of “Email Is Dead” articles in the past, we thought that we would have a look at the subject and see how it relates to eDiscovery, and the people that rely on those services.

The power of email

A simple web search lets me know that 124.5 billion ‘business’ emails are sent every day.  For a dying entity that is quite lively.  Over the last five years email use has grown 5% year on year so this vast usage is clearly going to remain a key plank in most people’s communication activity.

 So why do people insist on greatly exaggerating emails death?

 As a case in point, over the last year at Altlaw we have undertaken some major structural changes. These changes were accomplished on a project-by-project basis and we found that our communication habits changed quite drastically and very quickly.