Any solicitor who has been involved in an office automation project in recent years will be aware of the seismic change that follows the introduction of e-mail.

Along with opening the floodgates to a torrent of incoming messages, viruses and spam/junk mail, there can also be issues created internally by outbound e-mail.


The scale of this problem is shown by a recent US survey by e-mail security company Proofpoint. This found that within the previous 12 months: 35% of respondents had investigated a suspected internal leak of confidential information via e-mail; 51% had disciplined an employee for violating e-mail policies; 27% had sacked an employee for violating e-mail policies; and 11% had been ordered to produce employee e-mails to a court or regulatory body. In all, respondents estimated that nearly a quarter (25%) of all outbound messages contained content that posed a legal, financial or regulatory risk to their organisations.


Clearly the situation in this country is not directly comparable with the US experience, where businesses have to live with a harsh regulatory regime. However, we do have data protection legislation, racist and sexist e-mail content is a serious issue, and there are the paramount concerns of client confidentiality and professional liability - all of which can give rise to costly claims and damaging publicity from the transmission of just one carelessly or maliciously worded e-mail.


As to solutions, although there are IT systems that can scan outgoing messages for 'inappropriate' language, these can often be more trouble than they are worth.


Similarly, firms that have tried restricting the use of e-mail by junior staff, such as requiring all outbound client messages to first be vetted by a partner, have found this unworkable in practice.


However, one approach that does appear to have merits is to have a clearly defined policy on acceptable e-mail usage, so as to at least prevent inadvertent problems.



All this must be backed up by adequate training, so staff (and particularly partners, who are always 'far too busy' to attend training courses) really do know how to use the system properly and do not, for example, hit the 'reply to all' button and unwittingly broadcast a confidential message to a wider audience.


The Legal IT Innovators Group has produced two templates for e-mail best practice and user policies, as has the Law Society.



Links: www.proofpoint.com/outbound;


www.litig.org; www.it.lawsociety.org.uk




Charles Christian is an independent adviser to the Law Society's Software Solutions guide