Two Blog Posts With Good Advice About E-mail
Recently, two blog posts had some very good advice about e-mail in the context of litigation.
Daniel Schwartz in the Connecticut Employment Law Blog entitle his post, “You’ve Been Sued, What Phrases Are ‘Hot’ for Electronic Discovery Searches?” ABAJournal.com, carried a post by Molly McDonough entitled “Things You Should Never Put in an E-mail.”
Here is, for me, the simple version of Mr. Schwartz’ advice:
don't put something in an e-mail that you wouldn't want your mother to see on the front page of the New York Times six months later.
Here is the essence of Ms. McDonough’s advice, quoting a court reporter, Ron Sylvester:
My wife says you should never put anything in a company e-mail that you don’t want to be shown to 12 strangers on a big movie screen.
How could I say it any better? Thus, I merely make a modest effort to distribute the message further.
The message is on the surface merely defensive. In the context of litigation, it says that through discovery, things you put in e-mail will come back to hurt your case. Or, in a more general context, it says e-mail can come back to really embarrass you. More positively, careful attention to what and how you communicate, by e-mail in this case but in any medium generally, can only be beneficial to the business and all connected with it.
