Speed Up Routine Client and Opposing Counsel Email with Gmail's Smart Compose

What This Does

Gmail predicts what you are about to type and offers to finish the sentence for you. It also drafts full replies from a one-line description and suggests short responses you can send with a single click. Together, these features cut the time spent on routine correspondence, the follow-ups, confirmations, and status updates that fill most inboxes. You still control every word that goes out.

A small firm attorney's inbox runs on volume more than complexity. Dozens of short messages move through a single day: confirming a hearing time with opposing counsel, telling a client "received, will review and follow up," acknowledging a paralegal's note that a filing went through. None of that carries legal analysis, yet each one still takes thirty seconds to type from a blank line. Smart Compose and Help Me Write target exactly that category of email, the acknowledgments and scheduling replies that fill the gaps between real drafting work. For a solo practitioner without staff screening the inbox, or a small firm where every attorney answers their own email, shaving a minute off each of twenty routine replies a day adds up across a week faster than it looks. The tools sit inside the same Gmail window already open all day, so there's no new login or app to learn, just a suggestion that appears while typing and a saved template for a phrase used often. Treat this as a typing shortcut for the parts of the day that don't need legal judgment, not a drafting assistant for anything that does.

Before You Start

• You use Gmail for work email, either a personal account or through Google Workspace
• You can log in at mail.google.com or through the Gmail app
• Smart Compose is turned on in Settings (it is usually on by default, and Step 1 shows you where to check)
• If your organization runs Google Workspace instead of free Gmail, the Business Standard plan starts at $14/user/month and includes the same AI features

Steps

1. Turn on Smart Compose and Smart Reply

Click the gear icon in the top right of Gmail, then "See all settings." On the General tab, scroll to Smart Compose and select "Writing suggestions on." While you are there, turn on Smart Reply too, then scroll down and click Save Changes. Both stay on until you turn them off, so this is a one-time step.

2. Accept suggestions as you type

Start composing or replying to a message. As you write, Gmail predicts the rest of your sentence and shows it in light gray text just ahead of your cursor. Press Tab to accept the full suggestion, or the right arrow key to take it one word at a time. Keep typing if a suggestion is wrong. It disappears without interrupting you, and the more you write in Gmail, the more it adapts to your specific phrases and the people you write to most.

3. Use Smart Reply for one-line responses

Open a message that only needs a quick acknowledgment. Near the bottom of the email you will see two or three suggested replies, things like "Thanks, got it" or "I will look into this." Click one to load it into the compose window, add any specific detail, and send. Save this option for simple acknowledgments. Skip it for anything that needs nuance or a real decision.

4. Draft full emails with Help Me Write

For longer or more complex replies, open a new compose window or click Reply, then look for the pencil or star icon near the bottom of the compose box. Click it and describe what the email should say: who it is for, what happened, and the tone you want. Click Create. Gmail generates a full draft directly in the compose window.

If the icon does not appear, your Gmail version or Workspace plan may not include Help Me Write yet. Draft the email in a chatbot instead and paste the result into Gmail.

5. Refine the draft, then send

Read the draft against what you actually know about the situation before it goes anywhere. If the tone or length is off, use the Refine option and add an instruction such as "make it shorter" or "sound more formal." Once it reads right, fill in any names, dates, or numbers the AI could not have known, then send.

6. Save your best replies as templates

For messages you send over and over, turn a strong draft into a reusable template. Go to Settings → Advanced, enable Templates, and save. Then, in any compose window, click the three-dot menu, choose Templates, and save the draft under a name you will recognize later. Pull it up the next time a similar message lands and edit only what changed.

Example

Opposing counsel emails asking to move a deposition from Tuesday to the following Thursday, nothing else in the message. The reply is one line, exactly the kind of task where Smart Reply's suggested response, something close to "That works, Thursday is confirmed," saves retyping a sentence that says nothing substantive. Accept it, add the actual date and time by hand, and send. A client asks a status question late on a Friday: "Any update on my case?" A short bullet list dropped into Help Me Write, filed the answer, next step is discovery, nothing needed from the client right now, turns into a two-sentence reply drafted directly in the compose window. Read it against the actual file before sending, since Gmail has no way to know what's actually true about the matter, then fill in the specific date the next filing is due. Save that phrasing as a template afterward. The next Friday afternoon status question, from a different client, starts from that saved template instead of a blank compose window, with only the case-specific details changed by hand.

A good first test: pick the next three routine replies you send, accept the Smart Compose suggestion whenever it matches your intent, and count how many sentences you never had to type.

Caveats

Every email a small firm attorney sends can touch attorney-client privileged material, even a short one, so treat Smart Compose and Help Me Write as tools for the shell of a message, never its substance. Never let a suggestion finish a sentence that states a settlement figure, a deadline, a fact about the case, or anything a client told you in confidence. Type those details by hand every time, both because the AI has no way to know them and because an autocompleted guess that happens to be wrong reads as careless at best and as a misstatement to a client or opposing counsel at worst. Google's processing of a Gmail draft to generate suggestions is a separate question from privilege waiver, and firms should check their Workspace agreement's data handling terms before routing anything sensitive through Help Me Write, consistent with the confidentiality analysis under ABA Formal Opinion 512 and Rule 1.6. When in doubt about whether a matter is sensitive enough to warrant caution, assume it is. Scheduling logistics, filing acknowledgments, and quick "got your message" replies are safe territory. Anything touching case strategy, settlement posture, or a client's confidential facts should be typed from scratch, read twice, and sent without ever touching a suggested completion.

Whatever your field, treat the suggestions as speed rather than judgment. Gmail echoes common phrasing instead of checking facts, so read every draft once before sending anything that contains names, numbers, dates, or commitments.