E-mail can be a tremendous tool for the busy trial lawyer trying to stay in touch with his clients and office.  In fact, I LOVE E-mail and I frankly advise new clients that the best way to keep in touch with me is via E-mail for two reasons:  (1)  E-mail is easy to file in our case management software so I always have ALL the details of the E-mail to refer to as the case progresses, and (2) I respond more quickly to E-mails than I do to the phone (that’s probably a personal quirk of mine but I find myself always turning to my E-mail Inbox first and my Voicemail second– my thinking is that since I have this quirk, it’s better to embrace it and use E-mail than to fight it!  :-) 

But E-mail can also be VERY dangerous if not carefully used.  A billion dollar oooppppsss by an attorney illustrates the point.  A lawyer for the drug company giant, Eli Lilly & Co., was working on a billion dollar drug case.  This lawyer had two people named “Berenson” in her Outlook Contacts:  one Berenson was co-counsel in the case and the other Berenson was a New York Times reporter. 

By now you are probably guessing what happened with a “confidential” E-mail that the lawyer was mailing to her co-counsel regarding a “confidential settlement” that they were working on in the case….. Yup, it got emailed to the Times reporter rather than to her co-counsel.  Can you say OOOOPPPPSSSS?

The moral of the story is a simple one:  Always, always, always check to make sure that the TO: address in your E-mail is the correct person.  For those of you who use Outlook, you may want to consider turning off the Auto-Complete function that automatically inserts an E-mail address as you type the first few characters of the E-mail address.  Some people also configure a default Delayed Sending feature in their E-mail program so that ALL emails are automatically delayed a certain period of time– this permits you to delete an E-mail IF you discover your mistake before the E-mail sending time.

The bottom line is Be Careful and Practice Safe Computing.  The computer CAN be our best friend or our worst enemy…..

Thanks for reading,

Thanks, Jim
_________________________________________
James B. Reed, Esq.
Personal Injury & Malpractice Attorney
Ziff, Weiermiller, Hayden & Mustico, LLP
303 William St., Elmira, NY 14902
Tel. (607) 733-8866  Fax. (607) 732-6062
Toll Free 1-800-943-3529
mailto:jreed@zifflaw.com     http://www.zifflaw.com 

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