It doesn't take long to grow weary of the army of e-discovery products that promise to preserve, analyze and organize your company's e-mail factories. Each product has a legitimate cause to fight for, but no software can fully protect a company from the rascally typing fingers of its own employees.

E-mail is a crucial and frugal communication tool in today's professional world. Phone calls can take too much time and no one wants to waste a stamp when you can just hit “Send” instead.

Unfortunately, e-mail's ease of use frequently invites an appalling relaxation of standards. Employees perceive their electronic conversations as temporal, private, anonymous, and intimate–hardly anyone considers an e-mail message the same as a printed letter on embossed company letterhead.

In other words, people will say anything in an e-mail. People are tremendously cavalier and neglectful when authoring e-mail messages. Because of this, e-mails routinely become the veritable “smoking gun” in contemporary litigation matters.

Consider, for example, the seminal e-discovery Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC opinions where an HR supervisor's e-mail revealed that the company intended to “exit” Ms. Zubulake “ASAP” in part so she would not be eligible for “bonus consideration.”

You may also recall the oft-quoted e-mail from the Linnen v. A.H. Robbins Co. “Fen-Phen” case where an employee of the pharmaceutical company lamented how he would spend his “waning years writing checks to fat people worried about a silly lung problem.”

These examples and countless others reveal a glaring need for risk management that cannot be solely solved by e-discovery or e-mail archival software. Applications can flag keywords and routinely delete unnecessary e-mails, but they can't stop employees from typing ignorant and regrettable things.

A strict e-mail usage policy is a primary step in addressing potential e-mail chaos. Employees must be prohibited from using offensive language in an e-mail and no one should be allowed to use the company e-mail system for personal reasons (and vice-versa).

The rules on e-mail use should graft comfortably on to a well-designed and rigid records retention policy. Superfluous e-mails should be consistently destroyed while potentially relevant messages should be pristinely preserved. This is much easier said than done, but established policies will supervise any errant e-mail habits.

Policies are meaningless when employees are unaware they exist. Routine training is a necessary and annoying evil, but proactive measures can save the company from looking down the barrel of that “smoking gun.”

The permanence of an e-mail message must be stressed emphatically and constantly. A handwritten note can be completely obliterated by shredding or burning, yet most people agree that a tangible note embodies an aura of permanence. Ironically, the same folks are flippant and careless in what they write in an e-mail message even though their words can live in digital permanence on their computer, the recipient's computer, an e-mail server, or backup tapes.

To help envision the eternal nature of e-mail, imagine that every word you type is read by your boss; imagine your e-mail message blown up on a large screen in a courtroom; or imagine the embarrassment at reading your e-mail in a major newspaper. Simply put, don't say anything in an e-mail that you wouldn't say in person, or that you couldn't print out on a company letterhead.

Personnel and personal discussions are best done “offline”–on the phone or in person rather than permanently solidified in an e-mail thread. This may seem like a step down the technology ladder, but that only means the climb will be less risky.

It doesn't take long to grow weary of the army of e-discovery products that promise to preserve, analyze and organize your company's e-mail factories. Each product has a legitimate cause to fight for, but no software can fully protect a company from the rascally typing fingers of its own employees.

E-mail is a crucial and frugal communication tool in today's professional world. Phone calls can take too much time and no one wants to waste a stamp when you can just hit “Send” instead.

Unfortunately, e-mail's ease of use frequently invites an appalling relaxation of standards. Employees perceive their electronic conversations as temporal, private, anonymous, and intimate–hardly anyone considers an e-mail message the same as a printed letter on embossed company letterhead.

In other words, people will say anything in an e-mail. People are tremendously cavalier and neglectful when authoring e-mail messages. Because of this, e-mails routinely become the veritable “smoking gun” in contemporary litigation matters.

Consider, for example, the seminal e-discovery Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC opinions where an HR supervisor's e-mail revealed that the company intended to “exit” Ms. Zubulake “ASAP” in part so she would not be eligible for “bonus consideration.”

You may also recall the oft-quoted e-mail from the Linnen v. A.H. Robbins Co. “Fen-Phen” case where an employee of the pharmaceutical company lamented how he would spend his “waning years writing checks to fat people worried about a silly lung problem.”

These examples and countless others reveal a glaring need for risk management that cannot be solely solved by e-discovery or e-mail archival software. Applications can flag keywords and routinely delete unnecessary e-mails, but they can't stop employees from typing ignorant and regrettable things.

A strict e-mail usage policy is a primary step in addressing potential e-mail chaos. Employees must be prohibited from using offensive language in an e-mail and no one should be allowed to use the company e-mail system for personal reasons (and vice-versa).

The rules on e-mail use should graft comfortably on to a well-designed and rigid records retention policy. Superfluous e-mails should be consistently destroyed while potentially relevant messages should be pristinely preserved. This is much easier said than done, but established policies will supervise any errant e-mail habits.

Policies are meaningless when employees are unaware they exist. Routine training is a necessary and annoying evil, but proactive measures can save the company from looking down the barrel of that “smoking gun.”

The permanence of an e-mail message must be stressed emphatically and constantly. A handwritten note can be completely obliterated by shredding or burning, yet most people agree that a tangible note embodies an aura of permanence. Ironically, the same folks are flippant and careless in what they write in an e-mail message even though their words can live in digital permanence on their computer, the recipient's computer, an e-mail server, or backup tapes.

To help envision the eternal nature of e-mail, imagine that every word you type is read by your boss; imagine your e-mail message blown up on a large screen in a courtroom; or imagine the embarrassment at reading your e-mail in a major newspaper. Simply put, don't say anything in an e-mail that you wouldn't say in person, or that you couldn't print out on a company letterhead.

Personnel and personal discussions are best done “offline”–on the phone or in person rather than permanently solidified in an e-mail thread. This may seem like a step down the technology ladder, but that only means the climb will be less risky.