You gotta learn to type.

In a comment to Dennis Kennedy's Five by Five post, reader Russ Krajec, writes:

Excellent comments. However, I would suggest one subtle thing that is missing: learn how to type.

Time and again, the old partners were brought up with their dictation machines and cannot type at all. When it comes to email, they peck out terse responses with no explanation, and the computer becomes all but unusable to them. In fact, it inhibits their ability to function and they become afraid of the computer. Lord knows the clients are seething when they send an email for a quick question in hopes of avoiding getting billed 10 minutes for a simple yes/no question, only to have the partner bill them a half hour to type out three sentences.

I visited my kid's sixth grade class and told them that the single most important subject I ever had in high school was not English, math, science, or anything but TYPING. In fact, it was the only class in which I got a C, but it was the most useful class I ever had. (My high school just got a brand new PDP-11 and I wanted to be able to use it, so I took Typing with one other guy and 30 girls.) I told my kid's class that if you don't learn to type, it will be like running with a limp for the rest of your life. Certainly these old crusty partners are. The sad thing is that those old dogs keep limping and might need to put in the effort to learn a new trick or two.

All the email tools in the world aren't going to help the old partner who can't type.

I couldn't agree more. Like Russ, my most useful class in high school was typing. I can type nearly 70 words per minute and I can't imagine how much more productive I've become because of it. Everytime I see lawyers "hunting and pecking" their way around a keyboard, I grimmace. It's a diservice to themselves and their clients if they can't effectively use their computers, and it ends up costing them much, much more in lost time, additional support staff salaries, etc. than a good six week typing class would