Evidence
Things You Should Never Put in an E-mail
Posted Dec 3, 2008, 12:37 pm CST
By Molly McDonough
Over at the Wichita Eagle blog What the Judge Ate for Breakfast, there's a caution about e-mail during office hours on office computers.
Courts reporter Ron Sylvester quips, "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."
His wife's an employment lawyer, so she should know. The post notes that lawyers are increasingly searching company e-mail and files during e-discovery.
So what are they looking for?
Roger Matus, over at the blog Death by E-mail, reproduces a top 10 list.
Here are a few that will likely raise red flags for e-discovery sleuths:
• "Delete this email immediately."
• "I really shouldn't put this in writing."
• "We're going to do this differently than normal."
• "I don't want to discuss this in e-mail. Please give me a call."
• "Don't ask. You don't want to know."
Matus then advises, "If you find yourself typing one of these phrases, perhaps you should delete the entire e-mail."
Comments not appearing after a few seconds? Try emptying your cache ("Temporary Internet files"), making sure Javascript is activated, and refresh this page.