Mass Mailing Form Letters to All Clients

Sometimes you may want to send a mass mailing to all your clients. Or, maybe you want to send a mass mailer to all your open cases, your closed cases, your open workers' compensation cases, civil cases, etc. All of this is quick and easy to do. First, you need to decide if you want to attack this job by using mailing labels and then simply design a standard letter that may go to any and all of your cases by simply photocopying the letter. In this situation, you cannot use a window envelope and must use mailing labels.

CLICK THIS LINK TO LEARN HOW TO PRINT MAILING LABELS TO
ALL YOUR CLIENTS

Next, after you have printed mailing labels to for all your clients, you may design a general form letter that starts with something like "DEAR VALUED CLIENT...." etc. However, some offices may want the letter to appear more personal and not want to pull every client card to do the letter so that the client's name and address merge automatically onto the letter. The letter may then be sent via a window envelope or with a mailing label.

PERSONALIZING YOUR LETTER TO ALL YOUR CLIENTS
STEP 1 - MAKE IT RIGHT FOR ONE CLIENT
We now describe the procedure for sending a letter to all your clients. To start, pull a test client and design a letter for that one client so that you have the correct form letter commands that pulls in all the necessary information. You may also want to spell check the document. For example:

<<command = date>>
<<command = client>>
<<command = salutation>>

Please be advised that as of June 1, we are moving our offices to ABC Blvd. etc. etc.

Sincerely Yours,
ABC LAW OFFICES

<<command = staff,attyh,long>>
<<command = staff,attyh,upper>>/mja
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Other examples may include firm name changes/splits, changes in the laws and political situations, etc. etc. The important procedure is to make sure it works for one case. Notice the command = client will automatically pull in the client's name and address. Notice the staff commands at the bottom of the letter to pull the name of the attorney handling the case followed by their initials in upper case on the next line along with the initials of the person creating the letter in lower case.

You may want to print the letter out for one client and if you are using a window envelope make sure it sits properly in the window. You would not want to print 5,000 letters only to find out that the date and salutation are also in the window because there were not enough line feeds between them in the letter. Or perhaps you have to fold the letter in an odd way because the client's name and address is either too high or too low on the letter.

Once you have the right letter for one client - you should be able to pull any case in A1-Law and print that same letter and it should then merge all the information for that client and/or case onto the letter.

WARNING: We strongly advise you NOT to use any INPUT or GETPARTY commands in your form letter. Otherwise, if you have 1000 letters to be printed, you will be prompted in each and every letter. Be sure to automate the letter so that A1-Law automatically pulls the proper parties on the form letter.

STEP 2 - ADD THE PAGE AND LOOP COMMANDS
Okay - so you now have completed your letter and you are ready to send it to all your clients. At the bottom of the letter, you must add the following command:

<<COMMAND = PAGE>>

If you do not add a page break, the letter to the next client will start right after the Sincerely Yours on the same page as the letter to the previous client. You don't want that.....Next, right below the COMMAND = PAGE you want to add the LOOP command. Basically, the LOOP command says, "Go to another case and start this letter all over again...." Ideally, you probably do not want a document with 5,000 pages in it so it's better to do a form letter in blocks. For example, you may want to print letters for cases 1-500 first. Next print letters for cases 501 - 1000. Next print letters for cases 1001 - 1500, etc. Here's an example of what you might see at the bottom of your form letter that might go to the first 500 of your cases:

_____________________________

Sincerely Yours,
ABC LAW OFFICES
<<command = staff,attyh,long>>
<<command = staff,attyh,upper>>/mja
<<command = page>>
<<command = loop {filter between(case.caseno, 1, 500)} >>
_____________________________

Again, notice how the staff command automatically merges the name of the attorney handling the file for each letter. Also, on the following line, A1-Law inserts their initials in upper case followed by a slash (or you may use a colon) and the name of the person doing the letter.

Next, the LOOP command says to start with case number one and continue through 500. Notice how the filter statement in the loop command is surrounded by squiggly parenthesis.

WARNING: You must pull the first case matching the filtered parameters before printing the letter so that the first case matches the conditions set forth in the loop command. Otherwise, no matches will be found. In other words, we are saying the loop command to print letters for all cases from 1 to 500. Therefore, start by pulling case number 1 and then print the letter. If you pull case number 400, A1-Law will only do the merge from case number 400 to case 500 rather than case 1 to 500.

Therefore, click Search for a Case. Click the Search By dropdown and select Case No (Quick) and then enter 1 to pull case number one. If there are no matches found, try case number 2. Go to Form Letters and print the letter and A1-Law will then automatically create a document with letters for cases 1 to 500.

Refill the paper in your paper tray and proceed to Step 3

STEP 3 - MODIFY THE LOOP COMMAND FOR THE SECOND SET
We are no ready to proceed to the second batch of letters. Modify the loop command as follows:

<<command = loop {filter between(case.caseno, 501, 1000)} >>

Now, the loop command wants to print letters for case numbers 501 to 1000. If you print the letter for case number 65 (as an example) A1-Law will print the letter for that case (which is not necessary) and then advance forward to case number 501 and print it for cases 501-1000. If you are in a client card that is case number 1200, then you have already passed case number 1000 so A1-Law will only print the letter for the current case that it is in which it always does. It then sees the loop command and tries to find the next case (case number 501) but it is already beyond that case at 1200 so it does not print anything besides that letter. Therefore, just like in Step 2, it's best to click Search For A Case, Click the Search By dropdown and select Case No (Quick) and this time enter 501 to pull case number 501. If there are no matches found, try case number 502. Next, print the form letter and again, A1-Law merges case numbers 501 - 1000 and the second batch of letters is now ready to be printed.

Continue, with the next batch:

<<command = loop {filter between(case.caseno, 1001, 1500)} >>

until all cases have been printed. Of course you do not need to print the letters in batches of 500. You could always, print them in batches of 200 or 300, etc. Of course you may also decide to have one person print the first 500 while another prints the second 500, etc.

STEP 4 - MODIFYING THE LOOP COMMAND FOR SPECIAL SITUATIONS
The loop command may be filtered further by case status, type of case, attorney handling, etc.

Here is an example of the loop command for cases 1 to 500 only if they are OPEN cases. It's best to filter the case status by the first letter O for open cases. Here's the syntax for the loop command:

<<command = loop {filter between(case.caseno, 1, 500) .and. upper(case.casestat) = "O"} >>

Notice the periods surrounding the .and. Also, notice the spaces before and after the .and.

Here's the same syntax for CLOSED cases:

<<command = loop {filter between(case.caseno, 1, 500) .and. upper(case.casestat) = "CL"} >>

Here's the syntax for the LOOP command for the first 500 OPEN cases where the attorney handling is ABC

<<command = loop {filter between(case.caseno, 1, 500) .and. upper(case.casestat) = "O" .and. upper(case.atty_hand) = "ABC" } >>

IMPORTANT:
Remember - You must first pull Case Number 1 and then print the form letter so that A1-Law processes all letters from case number 1 through 500. Then when you change the parameters to 501 through 1000, pull case number 501. A1-Law will automatically print the form letter for case number 1 and then case number 501 regardless of the status of the case and who the attorney handling the case is because when it prints the first letter it does not see the LOOP command until the bottom of the letter.


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