[andrewmg]

I’m an attorney at a major firm and receive a couple to a few hundred emails daily. In general, auto-filtering emails away from the inbox is not possible, because you really may need to look at every email for possible relevance to a matter.

My system is simple: a general archive folder, matter-specific folders, and then a to-do list for longer-running things. I aim for inbox zero: every message in the inbox is either one I haven’t reviewed yet or one that I can act on quickly. Every email gets read, acted on or added to the to-do list if necessary, and then filed.

Outlook’s search feature works tolerably well. I search for emails from senders, to recipients, or within certain folders many times a day.