ACBA member Mario A. Moya, Moya Law Firm, sent us this example of a letter informing people not to send them hard copy documents that we thought you might find useful.

Dear Counsel:

To promote public health, and in hopes of doing our part to slow the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19), our office is temporarily transitioning to remote work for all of our secretarial and paralegal staff, as well as for our attorneys, starting on XXXX, March XXXX, 2020.

This will no doubt complicate our usual workflow in several ways, some foreseeable and some not.  One foreseeable challenge is that it will be extremely difficult to send physical correspondence, whether through the United States mail or by other private carrier.

During our period of remote work, we will therefore transition all of what is usually sent in physical form to email only.  We will continue to follow the same deadlines set forth by the Code for physical mail. You will see that we are using a different Proof of Service as part of this policy.  We will be adding and using the following section:

___ ONLY BY ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION. Only by e-mailing the document(s) to the persons at the e-mail address(es) listed based on notice provided on March XXX, 2020 that, during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, this office will be working remotely, not able to send physical mail as usual, and is therefore using only electronic mail. No electronic message or other indication that the transmission was unsuccessful was received within a reasonable time after the transmission.

Please consider this letter my office’s acceptance of your office following the same policy, until you provide us further notice.

If your office has any objection to our office following this policy, please let us know promptly, by XXXX, March XX, 2020. If there is an objection, we will attempt—but cannot guarantee—to send physical mail in this matter.