PSA Re Law Firm Voicemail

Note to anyone who might be contemplating calling a law firm and leaving a voice message that might be even remotely considered, shall we say a novelty:

More and more firms are using voicemail integration systems like Cisco's Unity Messaging. The upshot of this is voicemail becomes automatically and immediately freed of the phone, showing up as a .wav attached to the recipient's email. (I'm now so used to receiving voicemail this way I've all but forgotten how to get it off the phone itself.) From there, the message becomes trivially easy to forward or upload, whereupon the analog circle is closed as audio bits become widely circulated paper.

Yet another check on lawyers behaving badly? Time will tell. In the meantime, make no mistake: we're laughing at you, not with you.

[Update, 8/31] Ernest Miller notes that VoIP is poised to make this phenomenon even more widespread.