Title: Mapping the Information Superhighway: Electronic Mail and the Inadvertent Disclosure of Confidential Information
Abstract: 1. Introduction A. The Era ofE-Mail Electronic mail, popularly known as e-mail, is as common a fixture as the telephone in law offices across the nation.' The e-mail proliferation in the legal profession is no wonder; e-mail provides fast, efficient, inexpensive, seemingly instant communication. No more telephone tag. No more overnighting documents via expensive messenger services.... Even the most computer-phobic lawyers have embraced it.2 Indeed, many commentators predict that e-mail will replace paper correspondence and radically alter the practice of law.3 Advances in communications technology often generate debates over the accompanying impacts on legal practice,4 and the attorney-client privilege invariably arises as a primary point of contention? E-mail has proved no exception to this rule. There is a substantial body of scholarship on the attorney-client privilege and the implications of using e-mail in confidential communications.6 In particular, several commentators have investigated the risk of waiving the privilege via electronic disclosure.7 Surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of these treatments ignore a common and complex problem faced by practitioners-the inadvertent disclosure of confidential information. Consider, for a moment, a typical day of a hypothetical lawyer:9 Larry, an attorney for a plaintiffs' mass torts firm, arrives at the Dallas office at 8:00 a.m. after a long night of preparing for a deposition. The in-box on his desk has a fax from opposing counsel; Larry assumes it is a confirmation of today's deposition. Larry sits down at his desk, reaches for his cup of Starbucks coffee, and checks the voice mail. Larry hurriedly listens to the messages-he thinks one message was a little confusing, but he decides to have his secretary follow up on it later. Larry e-mails a partner in the Houston office and attaches the notes from yesterday's meeting regarding the strategy for a new case. Then he asks a summer associate to start reviewing the 500 employee files that a Boston defense firm sent in response to Larry's discovery request in an ongoing case. By 8:30 a.m., Larry is on his way to the deposition. Within the first thirty minutes of Larry's day there were five opportunities for the inadvertent disclosure of confidential information.10 The fast pace and enormous pressure of contemporary ' `legal practice make it easy to understand how inadvertent disclosures occur. I The emergence of e-mail as the preferred method of communication has led several authors to explore the legal consequences of accidentally hitting Reply to All or mistakenly clicking on the wrong name on an address list. Unfortunately, the law governing waiver of the attorney-client privilege through inadvertent disclosure is in a state of flux. The result in any instance of inadvertent disclosure ultimately depends on the jurisdiction in which a case is filed. To make matters worse, the amorphic standard used in most jurisdictions makes it impossible for an attorney to evaluate a case with any degree of certainty. Finally, the unique nature of electronic communication complicates the already murky authority on inadvertent disclosure. Of course, the best advice to any lawyer is to avoid inadvertent disclosures all together. But Larry's situation makes clear that preventing inadvertent disclosures is an intention much easier said than done. B. Approaching the Problem of Electronic Waiver This Note examines the inadvertent disclosure of privileged information delivered by electronic mail. First, it familiarizes readers with the fundamental aspects of e-mail transmission and security. It continues by reviewing the elements of the attorneyclient privilege and analyzing the three approaches currently employed to determine if the privilege has been waived by inadvertent disclosure. 12 It suggests that the obstacles posed by the widespread use of e-mail are symptoms of an overall deficiency in the treatment of inadvertent disclosures in general. …
Publication Year: 2001
Publication Date: 2001-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 3
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