At a very social day of learning about social media for law firms this week – we mostly sat around and talked about the issues, rather than listen to endless PowerPoint-led talks – I got a sage piece of advice: unsubscribe from any email newsletter you no longer read.This sounds obvious, but I'll bet you are subscribed to a least a few email newsletters you've never read, and they are probably sent to you because you bought something – in other words, you never really signed up for them in the first place. I was, until yesterday, signed up to something like 10 or 15 email newsletters I either once wanted but don't have the time to read, or never wanted in the first place.

Ed Weatherall, who's an email newsletter guru apparently, from Concep told us that after a few 'opens' of an email we don't want or need, if we don't unsubscribe from them we tend to just delete them out of hand – but never get round to saying we don't want them. This sucks time from our days and adds an unnecessary stressor in my humble opinion, and I don't need any more of those.

I've now done this and feel strangely liberated in a very minor way. I've also discovered which companies I've done business with either make it hard or impossible to unsubscribe from, and they've made it on to my 'evil' list.

There are several lessons for law firm marketing in this, I feel, alongside the obvious advice for any time-poor solicitor of divesting oneself of unnecessary email weight.

First, make sure you track who's opening your email newsletter. If someone's not opened it more than three times, why not try to find a way of unsubscribing them?

Second, don't sign people up for email newsletters just because they've done business with you – make sure they want it. I have more negative feelings for firms who do this than firms that don't. Simple.

Third, make unsubscribing a one-click or two-click process. I feel fine about companies I've been able to easily unsubscribe from – I really don't about those I can't.