Apr 20 2008
How To Respond To Legal Disclaimers In Emails - A Mildly Nuclear Suggestion
When you’re dealing with lawyers via email, you will receive messages with threatening disclaimers attached to them. These disclaimers essentially foretell the Apocalypse if you do something normal, like forward the email message to someone else.
Problem is, lawyers have these disclaimers set to automatically append themselves to every email message they send. So they get slapped onto the most innocuous emails you could ever see.
The other day, participating in an email conversation with some friends, I received a “reply all” email from a lawyer friend I’ll call Sam. His only word in the reply was “cool!”
Followed by a lengthy email disclaimer that said something like the following: This electronic mail (including any attachments) may contain information that is privileged, confidential, and/or otherwise protected from disclosure to anyone other than its intended recipient(s). Any dissemination or use of this electronic email or its contents (including any attachments) by persons other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify us immediately by reply email so that we may correct our internal records. Please then delete the original message (including any attachments) in its entirety. Thank you.
As you will have deduced by now, The Mind Scalpel has a bit of a short fuse. So when I received this one-word email message and disclaimer, I snapped. Here is my reply to Sam. I recommend you come up with similar replies if you find yourself in the same situation.