The Not-So-Merry Perils of Email

“                                                  Why, I’ll exhibit a bill

    in the parliament for the putting down of men.

    How shall I be revenged on him? for revenged I

    will be, as sure as his guts are made of puddings.”

• The Merry Wives of Windsor, II,1;

  Mistress Page fuming over a duplicitously duplicative love-letter from Sir John Falstaff

I recently sent an e-mail to Lauren----- the wrong Lauren.  The autofill function of my e-mail service helped me make a stupid mistake. Lauren Wrong got a message intended for Lauren Right.  I was lucky; it was an innocuous e-mail. But it could have led to disastrous consequences.

It made me think of Shakespeare. (Yes, that’s how my mind works!)  Specifically, I thought of the Merry Wives of Windsor. Stay with me as I draw the connection. Hopefully it will strengthen your ethical practices regarding e-mails.

But first, some shameless promotion for my beloved Nashville Shakespeare Festival (founded in 1988! Shakespeare Festivals grow up so fast…):

It makes me merrier than a Windsor Wife that The Merry Wives of Windsor opened at One City in Nashville this past weekend! The Nashville Shakespeare Festival pulled together another stellar cast and made me smile and laugh for two hours. We all need to smile and laugh. For at least two hours. Probably more. The show runs four more weekends, Thursdays through Sundays, through September 21. I highly recommend your attendance.

Now back to raising our ethical awareness regarding e-mail communication.

In the scene quoted above, two Wives of Windsor have discovered that Sir John Falstaff has sent them both love letters, identical but for the names, with the aim of seducing them out of their fortunes. Alas, Sir Falstaff’s carelessness has allowed the wrong person(s) to become aware of the confidential information in the letters, leading to severe punishments leveled against the sender by the recipients, the two merry wives.

Falstaff’s ethical shortcomings exceed the scope of this blog, but we can use this scene to highlight the harm possible from a letter ending up in unintended hands. The perilous possibility of this scenario increases with the speed and ease of e-mail communication. One misplaced letter, one incorrect auto-completion in an address line, one hasty click of a send button, and a client’s information could end up in adversarial hands, possibly derailing their case and leaving you, dear practitioner, at the not-so-merry mercy of the Board of Professional Responsibility.

One tip I will leave with you: don’t enter the address of the recipient of your e-mail until you have finished drafting the e-mail.  And when you do so, check and double check the recipient’s name, as you may know multiple people with the same name.

As legal practitioners, we know that we have an ethical duty to exercise reasonable care to protect the confidentiality of email communications. Stay vigilant, lest your e-mails end up in the wrong hands.