A recent Gazette drew attention to the writer’s ‘bugbear’ with emails - that many senders of them fail to quote his reference.

I can’t say I agree. On the contrary, one delight with emails is precisely that you can send them straight to the correct individual within the law firm, thus rendering redundant the old postroom role of sorting mail by file reference.

We all need bugbears, though, so how about this one instead. Many solicitors’ emails brazenly flout their plain, and long-standing, obligation (now under chapter 8 (publicity), outcome 8.5 of the Solicitors Regulation Authority Handbook) to include in emails their firm’s name, registered number and so on. Occasionally, I am genuinely unclear whether I am dealing with a solicitor at all.

Years ago, the excuse often aired for this failure was that emails, being ‘cyber-spacey’, somehow did not count as law firm communications. Any regulatory ambiguity on that point was nailed long ago, but I suspect it still persists in some minds. Recently, the problem has got worse, mostly through use of BlackBerrys and the like. Again, the feeling seems to be that emails by BlackBerry do not really count. This is lazy thinking and does not bear a moment’s analysis.

If an email is sent by a solicitor on client business, then that email must comply with the requirements of the Handbook. If it fails to do so, that reflects badly on the sender and on the sender’s firm; and on me as a fellow solicitor. Which is why it is a bugbear.

Dick Jennings,RDY Jennings & Co, Malton