If you’ve ever received an email that was sent at 3 a.m. and wondered what the heck the person was doing up at that hour, you may well have also wondered if they “have a life.”

And you’ve probably sent some email at crazy hours of the night and wondered what the recipient might be thinking about you. Are they thinking that you’re disorganized, under the gun, procrastinating, a workaholic?

Well, if you’re using Outlook and want to work in the middle of the night but have it look as though your email was composed and sent at a more conventional hour, you can use the Delay Delivery option to schedule exactly when the message will leave your outbox.

In the screen shot above, I composed the test email and ran the Delay Delivery feature at 12:18pm. I set it to be delivered at 12:25. Note that it appears as having been sent at 12:25.

In addition to the middle-of-the-night scenario, there are many other situations where you might want to delay an email going out until later in the day or the next morning, or even days or weeks hence.

For example, let’s say it’s 10:15 a.m. and you’re working on a file, and you want to inform opposing counsel of a document revision you’ve just concluded, but you have to turn your attention to something else for the next three hours. If you send the email, you know she’s going to get right back to you but you don’t want to deal with it until later. You can draft the email and use the delayed Delivery option to cue it up for delivery at 2:30 so you can, as the infomercial says, set it and forget it.

Or for a more systematic application of the feature, let’s say you want to remind your clients to send you certain documents at specific times. Your staff can compose the reminder email and schedule it go out on a specific date. This is great task for your administrative assistant: have them identify on a weekly or monthly basis which clients need certain reminders and then let them spend an hour or two composing them and cuing them up for delivery on the right dates.

Once you and your staff become familiar with the feature, you’ll find more uses for this great time management tip in your legal practice.

Here’s how to do it.
1. Open and compose your email
2. Click the Options tab/menu
3. Click the Delay Delivery button/item
4. Check the “Don not deliver before” box

6. Enter the date and time for delivery
7. Click Close
8. Click Send to cue your email

Note: the email will sit in your Outbox until the day/time you designated. Note, too, that your computer must be ON and Outlook must be running at that time for the message to be sent. If your computer is off or if Outlook is not running, the message will be sent when Outlook next launches.