Communication 101 – Transmission & Receipt

How to close the loop of communications

Litigators deal with court offices. And court offices require that filings be ‘delivered’ before they are filed. That is an excellent metaphor for successful communications. It’s not enough to send (serve) your letter, email, or notice. Just like it’s not enough to receive something. To be effective, communication requires three distinct steps.

·               First, you must transmit it.

·               Second, your counterparty must receive it.

·               Third, the counterparty must acknowledge receipt.

Only then can you safely assume that you have effected delivery.

Initially, I wrote about this subject in the Think Like a Lawyer substack post here. But recently, I have grown increasingly aware that lawyers don’t follow this formula. It’s annoying, and I get grumpy just thinking about it.

Let’s examine the formula more closely. The transmission part should be obvious. You have no communication unless you say or send something to someone or at least somewhere.

The receipt part should be equally apparent. Consider the metaphor: if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, of course it does, but who cares? And that’s the point. If you send a letter and no one receives it, who cares what you sent? Even if you prove you sent it, your message failed.

And that brings me to the acknowledgement part. The transmitter may be waiting forever for a reply to the message. What if the recipient didn’t receive it? What if the recipient received it but chose not to reply? These are quite different circumstances.

It is efficient if all the parties in the communication know the status. Then, the transmitter can act on the knowledge that the ball is in the recipient’s court. And the recipient knows this. Facts, as they say, are facts. But facts have so much more power if the parties know them to be facts. Until the recipient acknowledges receipt, the transmission is merely an assumption or a hope. And not a fact.

Well, sometimes, the sender can prove that the recipient received the message. Is that enough? Often not. Because the recipient may have ‘received it’ in the office but not read it. Or received it in an illegible format. Or received it but has not yet processed it.

There may be a tactical reason not to acknowledge receipt, but that is borderline unethical. If the recipient wants to delay a process, then claiming non-receipt or remaining silent in the face of requests for confirmation may accomplish that result. Is that the reputation you want?

So, stick to the basics. Communication is a simple, three-part process: Transit, receive, and acknowledge receipt. That’s it. This three-step program will improve your professional practice.