Do as I say; Not as I do. The bankruptcy of Dewey & LeBoeuf sent shivers throughout big law firms. The firm could trace its history back 100 years and employed over 1000 lawyers when it exploded. Last week, key leaders of the firm were charged with securities law violations and criminal theft charges related … Read more »
Tag: Email
Email, Warrants and Corporate Email
Inside the company, you can take away your employees expectations of privacy when it comes to email. It has been unclear whether the same is true when it comes to the government inspecting your email. Surprisingly, there has been little law on whether your email would be subject to same protections as your phone calls … Read more »
That’s a $h!#ty Policy
On the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal is story about one of the fallouts from Goldman Sachs’ recent problems with the SEC: George Carlin Never Would’ve Cut It at the New Goldman Sachs. One of the most sensational bits of Goldman Sachs fiasco was an email from a Goldman executive “[B]oy that, timberwolf … Read more »
N.J. Supreme Court upholds privacy of personal e-mails accessed at work
The New Jersey courts have been handling a case that squarely addressed a company’s ability to monitor employee email. Back in April of 2009, I mentioned a New Jersey case that found e-mail, sent during work hours on a company computer, was not protected by the attorney-client privilege: Compliance Policies and Email. That later was … Read more »
Monitoring Employee E-mail in Canada
The key to a defensible system of e-mail monitoring is the creation of a comprehensive and communicated computer use policy. That is apparently as true in Canada as it in the United States. Brian Bowman and Andrew Buck put together an excellent privacy primer on Monitoring employee e-mail: a privacy primer. In what situations is … Read more »
Workplace Computer Policy and the Attorney Client Privilege
Back in April, I mentioned a New Jersey case that found e-mail, sent during work hours on a company computer, was not protected by the attorney-client privilege: Compliance Policies and Email (Stengart v. Loving Care [.pdf]) That case has now been overturned. It seems that a company’s policy on computer use may be more limited … Read more »
Extranets for Law Firm and Client Collaboration – Moving Beyond Email
One of the problems with collaboration between law firms and their clients is that too much of it happens through email. Email is fast, allows you to send the same message to lots of people, and is inexpensive. But it is still a set of messages sent back and forth, much like the Pony Express. … Read more »
Compliance Policies and Email
You should take a look at your computer use and email policies to see how they address three recent cases involving email in the workplace. The first case involves unauthorized acces: (Van Alstyne v. Electronic Scriptorium, Inc.). The president of the company had broken into an employee’s personal AOL email account. The employee had occasionally … Read more »
Email Compliance 201
LiveOffice presented a webinar on records management issues related to electronic correspondence and archiving. (I missed the Email Compliance 101 session.) First up was Christina Rovira, Legal Compliance Advisor at CoreCompliance & Legal Services, Inc. She pointed out that SEC and FINRA require investment advisers and broker-dealers to supervise the business activities of their representatives. … Read more »
Things You Should Never Put in an E-Mail
Molly McDonough of the ABA Journal puts together a list of things you should never put in an email, borrowing from Roger Matus‘ 10 Things Never To Put In Email: “I could get into trouble for telling you this, but…” “Delete this email immediately.” “I really shouldn’t put this in writing.” “Don’t tell So-and-So.” Or, … Read more »