subject: A New Threat for Lawyers [print this page] Two decades ago, few, if any, lawyers worried about the emails that might come back to haunt a client and jeopardize a case. In fact, it was nearly unheard of, says A. Harrison Barnes, lawyer, career coach and LawCrossing.com founder. Today, however, folks can't seem to understand that if it's digital, it's forever. Delete never really means delete and a photograph that you posted on your blog ten years ago at that beach/biker rally, top lifted for the camera, is never going to provide anything good in the future. It's like DNA - there's no disputing it and once it's made its way into a discovery package, the best you can hope for is whatever magic your lawyer can work.
In the course of an employment case, where an employee is filing a discrimination or any other kind of claim against his employer, he can bet those emails he's been trading since the day he was hired are going to be analyzed - word by word, image by image and in frustrating detail. That conversation you had with your best bud, via email, about ways you can "get" the boss? Remember that one? The one that included starting a rumor that he was fooling around on the missus? Ahyou do remember. It's going to be found.
Another problem for employees is that if an employer can prove, via the many, many emails, texts and web surfing, that the employee who's suing him wasted valuable company time, it can certainly weaken a case.
So, as a society, as we addicts to our electronic devices? Maybe, says the LawCrossing.com founder. Used to be, it was those annoying chain emails that served one of two purposes: either a recipient was superstitious and immediately forwarded the email on to every other person's he known since grade school, or we became annoyed with them and would hit "delete" before ever even opening the email. Now, with Twitter, Facebook and the countless other methods used to shrink our world into a small place where everyone mingles with everyone else, we have a newfound need to share everything with whoever is a part of our networks. And the cycle continues.
"Many of us even found a way to bypass our employer's intranet; we began using our smart devices to keep up with all the tweets and Facebook happenings", says A. Harrison Barnes. Still, the truth is, we all fall into the familiar habit of plundering the web, via company owned equipment, during the workday.
So what's the lesson here? "Don't do it", says Barnes. Even if you're never involved in any kind of lawsuit, there are no guarantees a co-worker won't sue at some point and any email or communication you've shared with him is going to be discovered. Period. No one's suggesting you become unsociable or refrain from an occasional casual email to the co-worker who got married last week, the lesson is to avoid anything questionable. Don't comment on dangerous rumors, don't accuse the boss of fooling around and don't make threats - this is the advice Barnes suggests.
