Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Almost end of career lawyer here. Never would I ever put sensitive information in writing. And, like PP, as a litigator, I scour emails because so many people put so much in emails that they shouldn’t. This is not a junior lawyer issue and if your junior lawyer is holding this position, give them a raise.

There is no way you never did this - as a litigator - everything about preparing for trial and litigation strategy generally is “sensitive.” Did you use carrier pigeons? Please.

Phone calls and meetings. Not in writing. It’s not that hard. You just have to adjust your mindset.

Sorry, you’re not credible. Witness outlines, the pleadings themselves with copious redlines, I could go on and on. It’s in emails. Maybe you personally are so senior that you don’t do much of anything on a computer, but your team definitely does!

I think we're using "sensitive" in different ways. To me, an outline for witness prep is an example of a document that could be privileged and confidential, but not necessarily sensitive. OTOH, discussions about whether a case needs to be settled before discovery (and how much it's worth to the company to settle) are highly sensitive and better handled first by a phone call or meeting.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Almost end of career lawyer here. Never would I ever put sensitive information in writing. And, like PP, as a litigator, I scour emails because so many people put so much in emails that they shouldn’t. This is not a junior lawyer issue and if your junior lawyer is holding this position, give them a raise.

There is no way you never did this - as a litigator - everything about preparing for trial and litigation strategy generally is “sensitive.” Did you use carrier pigeons? Please.

Phone calls and meetings. Not in writing. It’s not that hard. You just have to adjust your mindset.

Sorry, you’re not credible. Witness outlines, the pleadings themselves with copious redlines, I could go on and on. It’s in emails. Maybe you personally are so senior that you don’t do much of anything on a computer, but your team definitely does!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Almost end of career lawyer here. Never would I ever put sensitive information in writing. And, like PP, as a litigator, I scour emails because so many people put so much in emails that they shouldn’t. This is not a junior lawyer issue and if your junior lawyer is holding this position, give them a raise.

There is no way you never did this - as a litigator - everything about preparing for trial and litigation strategy generally is “sensitive.” Did you use carrier pigeons? Please.

Phone calls and meetings. Not in writing. It’s not that hard. You just have to adjust your mindset.

Anonymous wrote:That junior lawyer was probably at a firm that told her to follow that protocol. Of COURSE we discuss sensitive things! The only thing we don't do is send a link to documents on a shared drive and in the same email send the password. The password is sent in a second, separate email. But yes, TONS of legal info is sent back and forth via email.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Almost end of career lawyer here. Never would I ever put sensitive information in writing. And, like PP, as a litigator, I scour emails because so many people put so much in emails that they shouldn’t. This is not a junior lawyer issue and if your junior lawyer is holding this position, give them a raise.

There is no way you never did this - as a litigator - everything about preparing for trial and litigation strategy generally is “sensitive.” Did you use carrier pigeons? Please.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am really, really careful about this due to how many times I have, as a litigator, found smoking guns in emails. Privilege isn't always relevant to my sensitivity on this, because it is not absolute. I've worked on several cases where documents the lawyers believed at the time would be protected by privilege ultimately weren't.

I can only assume you mean non lawyer emails. Obviously. Different animal

+1. Another litigator here. Internal emails among exclusively lawyers (even if in-house lawyers) are not something that “many times” end up discoverable.

Over the course of my career I have seen “many times” emails the lawyers believed would never be in discovery, end up in discovery. Examples: fiduciary duty lawsuits, malpractice lawsuits, emails that ended up getting forwarded outside the original chain, emails that ended up getting new people added including an underlying email down chain, and, of course, emails that simply shouldn’t have been produced but were anyway due to doc review fck up.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am really, really careful about this due to how many times I have, as a litigator, found smoking guns in emails. Privilege isn't always relevant to my sensitivity on this, because it is not absolute. I've worked on several cases where documents the lawyers believed at the time would be protected by privilege ultimately weren't.

I can only assume you mean non lawyer emails. Obviously. Different animal

+1. Another litigator here. Internal emails among exclusively lawyers (even if in-house lawyers) are not something that “many times” end up discoverable.

Over the course of my career I have seen “many times” emails the lawyers believed would never be in discovery, end up in discovery. Examples: fiduciary duty lawsuits, malpractice lawsuits, emails that ended up getting forwarded outside the original chain, emails that ended up getting new people added including an underlying email down chain, and, of course, emails that simply shouldn’t have been produced but were anyway due to doc review fck up.

+1. I have seen entire email chains made public simply because one person was added that broke the privilege. Today I never assume emails will remain privileged.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am really, really careful about this due to how many times I have, as a litigator, found smoking guns in emails. Privilege isn't always relevant to my sensitivity on this, because it is not absolute. I've worked on several cases where documents the lawyers believed at the time would be protected by privilege ultimately weren't.

I can only assume you mean non lawyer emails. Obviously. Different animal

Privilege is not absolute. And just because an attorney believed an email was privileged at the time doesn't mean a judge will agree during in camera review.

I'm an attorney, and I am careful about what I put into emails. If I think something could be misconstrued, it's a phone call.

In-house lawyers cannot effectively support a business with this kind of extremely inefficient risk-averse posture. Far-fetched scenarios about potential litigation should not drive everything. Write an email to your colleagues like a normal person.

Depends on your experience, I guess. I was in house for ~15 years. And yes, email was often easier, especially when dealing with significant differences in time zones or co-workers in other countries for whom English was a second language. But I also saw multiple problems created that could have been avoided by a phone call instead of a hastily written and poorly phrased email. And the belief that many non-lawyer coworkers had that any email marked "privileged" with in house counsel cc'd was absolutely protected from discovery created multiple headaches.

It may depend on how frequently your company is involved in litigation. For us, litigation was not a far-fetched possibility but a continuing occurrence, due at least in part to our size and the nature of our business (media/tech) rather than any misdoing on our part. A hasty email could be extremely expensive down the road.

I'm not saying that everything had to be a phone call. But definitely phone calls and meetings to discuss things, followed by a professional email summarizing the discussion, were best for sensitive discussions that could be misconstrued if taken out of context. And of course, it's a judgement call as to what is sensitive enough to require the extra effort to be handled that way. That judgement is part of the value that in house counsel brings to the table.

Again, we’re not talking about “non-lawyer colleagues.” OP is talking about one lawyer refusing to email other lawyers in the company. That kind of thing coming up in discovery is a very remote possibility.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am really, really careful about this due to how many times I have, as a litigator, found smoking guns in emails. Privilege isn't always relevant to my sensitivity on this, because it is not absolute. I've worked on several cases where documents the lawyers believed at the time would be protected by privilege ultimately weren't.

I can only assume you mean non lawyer emails. Obviously. Different animal

+1. Another litigator here. Internal emails among exclusively lawyers (even if in-house lawyers) are not something that “many times” end up discoverable.

Over the course of my career I have seen “many times” emails the lawyers believed would never be in discovery, end up in discovery. Examples: fiduciary duty lawsuits, malpractice lawsuits, emails that ended up getting forwarded outside the original chain, emails that ended up getting new people added including an underlying email down chain, and, of course, emails that simply shouldn’t have been produced but were anyway due to doc review fck up.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am really, really careful about this due to how many times I have, as a litigator, found smoking guns in emails. Privilege isn't always relevant to my sensitivity on this, because it is not absolute. I've worked on several cases where documents the lawyers believed at the time would be protected by privilege ultimately weren't.

I can only assume you mean non lawyer emails. Obviously. Different animal

Privilege is not absolute. And just because an attorney believed an email was privileged at the time doesn't mean a judge will agree during in camera review.

I'm an attorney, and I am careful about what I put into emails. If I think something could be misconstrued, it's a phone call.

In-house lawyers cannot effectively support a business with this kind of extremely inefficient risk-averse posture. Far-fetched scenarios about potential litigation should not drive everything. Write an email to your colleagues like a normal person.

Depends on your experience, I guess. I was in house for ~15 years. And yes, email was often easier, especially when dealing with significant differences in time zones or co-workers in other countries for whom English was a second language. But I also saw multiple problems created that could have been avoided by a phone call instead of a hastily written and poorly phrased email. And the belief that many non-lawyer coworkers had that any email marked "privileged" with in house counsel cc'd was absolutely protected from discovery created multiple headaches.

It may depend on how frequently your company is involved in litigation. For us, litigation was not a far-fetched possibility but a continuing occurrence, due at least in part to our size and the nature of our business (media/tech) rather than any misdoing on our part. A hasty email could be extremely expensive down the road.

I'm not saying that everything had to be a phone call. But definitely phone calls and meetings to discuss things, followed by a professional email summarizing the discussion, were best for sensitive discussions that could be misconstrued if taken out of context. And of course, it's a judgement call as to what is sensitive enough to require the extra effort to be handled that way. That judgement is part of the value that in house counsel brings to the table.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am really, really careful about this due to how many times I have, as a litigator, found smoking guns in emails. Privilege isn't always relevant to my sensitivity on this, because it is not absolute. I've worked on several cases where documents the lawyers believed at the time would be protected by privilege ultimately weren't.

To other internal lawyers?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am really, really careful about this due to how many times I have, as a litigator, found smoking guns in emails. Privilege isn't always relevant to my sensitivity on this, because it is not absolute. I've worked on several cases where documents the lawyers believed at the time would be protected by privilege ultimately weren't.

I can only assume you mean non lawyer emails. Obviously. Different animal

+1. Another litigator here. Internal emails among exclusively lawyers (even if in-house lawyers) are not something that “many times” end up discoverable.

Anonymous wrote:Almost end of career lawyer here. Never would I ever put sensitive information in writing. And, like PP, as a litigator, I scour emails because so many people put so much in emails that they shouldn’t. This is not a junior lawyer issue and if your junior lawyer is holding this position, give them a raise.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am really, really careful about this due to how many times I have, as a litigator, found smoking guns in emails. Privilege isn't always relevant to my sensitivity on this, because it is not absolute. I've worked on several cases where documents the lawyers believed at the time would be protected by privilege ultimately weren't.

To other internal lawyers?