An Attorney’s Guide to Not Getting in Trouble with Email, the Phone, and the Internet at Work

Email: it can save your bacon and cook your goose.

Email is the greatest thing since sliced bread. (I wonder what the greatest thing was before sliced bread.) It can save you a ton of time, but it can also get you into a lot of trouble. Here, we’ll talk about a bunch of good ways to use email, and the traps to avoid.


How Email Can Save Your Bacon

There are two basic uses of email at work: to gather information and to cover your butt.

When you have a quick question for somebody, email is a great way to ask it. If you have a supervisor who is either very busy or just doesn’t like face-to-face communication, email can be a life-saver. And if you’re asking a general question: “Has anybody done any Statute of Limitations work?” “Does anybody have any advice about Judge so-and-so?” email saves you the trouble of asking around individually.

The “cover your butt” function is an often-overlooked—and underutilized—use of email. Whether it’s protecting your ideas or clarifying issues with clients or distancing yourself from a colleague’s questionably ethical conduct, you can use emails just as you would a memo. For instance, email is a great way to mark ideas as your own. You can send an email to a colleague saying, “I’m glad you like my idea for X and I appreciate your feedback on it. I’ve thought of other ways to improve it. Can we chat?” You could accomplish this face-to-face or on the phone, but in an email you’ve got a record of it—and exactly whose idea is being discussed. Print it and keep it!

Minimize (or eliminate) personal emails at work.

If they want to, your employer can ban personal use of email entirely. Even if they don’t—be careful. In general, employers frown on personal email. And if you’re the one who receives an email from a friend that has a virus attached—or the large attachment on a personal email you receive at the office crashes the employer’s computer (yes, it’s happened)—it’s a black mark against your record that you just don’t need. As a rule of thumb, don’t check your personal email at work!

Anybody can potentially read your office email. Think about that before you email (or receive) anything.

The thought probably creeps you out. I think it’s a natural instinct to treat email like a private chat. But you can’t count on that, unfortunately. More and more employers are scouring their employees’ emails. Furthermore, once you hit the send button, you have no idea where your email might wind up. When you send anything, assume that it could appear on the front page (like Monica Lewinsky’s) or in court (like Bill Gates’). And even if the email itself isn’t forwarded, if the recipient prints it out, the whole world can see it!

One man’s meat is another man’s poison pen: Be careful with jokes and joke lists.

You probably get as many jokes emailed to you as I do. Maybe more. Some of the stuff is a howl. Some of it’s goofy. And some of it is actively offensive. The fact is, it doesn’t matter to me—I don’t get my email at, or send email from, an office with other people in it. If you receive jokes and want to pass them on to people at work, be very careful to edit for content before you do so. Don’t send emails to colleagues, or from your office, that contain anything profane, political, or otherwise in very bad taste, no matter how hilarious you think they are. When you’re relatively new at work, and you’re talking about colleagues as opposed to friends, you don’t know whom you might offend. It’s not worth the risk. Save jokes for your friends outside of work if you have any doubt about their appropriateness.

Incidentally, if you do send out jokes on a routine basis, do it from your home computer. An attorney from Buchalter Nemer in Newport Beach, California points out that “If you’re constantly sending out joke lists during the day, people will start asking: ‘When are you getting your work done?’”

If you’ve got nothing nice to say, don’t email it.

When someone really burns your biscuits, it’s tempting to say to yourself, “I’ll give them a piece of my mind!” and fire off a screaming email. As is true with memos and letters, once you put something negative in an email, it’s memorialized forever. You don’t need that particular albatross hanging around your neck for life.

Take a leaf from Abe Lincoln’s book when it comes to handling anger in writing. Whenever anyone did anything that made Lincoln angry, he would fire off a nasty letter to the offender, outlining exactly what he thought of him. Then he’d put the letter in a drawer. He never sent any of those letters.

That’s a great idea. If you’re angry with somebody, pour your feelings out on paper (or computer)—and leave it at that. Throw away the paper, delete the file. Firing off a negative email to them is never a good idea.

Don’t use office email to discuss professional colleagues with your friends.

Don’t make any negative comments in emails to friends about people at the office or in the profession. If you want to blow off steam, talk to friends in person or over the phone, from home. You never know where a negative email might wind up.

LawCrossing Career Advice

A lawyer sent an email to a friend, saying, "Based on my experiences with black judges, this guy's not as dumb as most of them." The friend took the email to a reporter, and it wound up on the front page of the paper.

LawCrossing Career Advice

A lawyer whom we'll call Porky gets an email from a colleague reading, "Have you ever argued a case in Judge X's court? Any tips?" Porky emails back, "He is a very nasty person. He will make your life hell. When he was a kid I bet they had to tie a pork chop around his neck to get a dog to play with him." The recipient liked the "pork chop" line so much he forwarded it to another friend. The email wound up getting forwarded to the judge himself. As a colleague of Porky's noted,"How do you suppose our firm does in front of that judge now?"

LawCrossing Career Advice

New lawyer, works for the general counsel's office at a state college in the Midwest. She uses her office email for personal exchanges and gossip, with catty messages about coworkers and supervisors. She is horrified to find her emails in a newspaper expose about state employee misuse of email.

Don’t discount the value of face-to-face communication.

Email is so easy to use that it’s easy to let it take over, kind of like communicative kudzu. That’s a mistake. As lawyers at Arnold & Porter in Washington, DC point out, “It’s easy to misinterpret the tone and intent of email.” An attorney from Hunton & Williams in Richmond, Virginia adds that “In email, if you’re trying to be funny, there’s no inflection. What you say can seem stupid or offensive.”

In addition, much of what you learn when you listen to people involves the way they say something, rather than what they say. Body language counts for a lot, and it’s lost in email. So don’t surrender your human contact to email.

Remember that emails between you and your clients (and anything else confidential) deserve special attention.

Email you send is not confidential. If you want it to be confidential, make a point of marking it ‘confidential.’ And if it’s really secret, don’t use email at all. Send it by regular mail.

When it comes to privileged communications, you’re better off with a phone call. Nobody can. get at those. If you do exchange any emails with clients, be sure to print out and file all such communications, and always include attorney-client and/or work product disclaimers on the email. Your employer will have standard wording for these. Use it!

Proofread your emails for typos.

Email is casual, but it’s not that casual. You don’t want your emails to suggest that you’re semi-literate, even if you’re just in a hurry. Write email as carefully as you’d write anything else your employer sees. Proofread your emails—you’re always being judged for your attention to detail.

The Telephone

Personal phone calls at the office

Employers don’t listen in on your phone calls. (At least, most of them don’t. I talked with one lawyer who’d clerked at a firm that bugged the phones and monitored the conversations at the office, “just so they knew what was going on.” Ugh. Thankfully that's rare.) But just the same, be careful with the personal calls you make from work. Why? It’s got to do with the amount of time yon spend on personal calls. Employers do track phone calls that are made from every phone at the office. You’ll be charged for calls you make that aren’t on employer business. And if you routinely receive personal calls at the office, your secretary or the receptionist will know. Everybody gets personal calls, but you should minimize them to the extent you can. Also, remember that people can overhear you. If you have to speak about something personal and sensitive at work, close your door—or go outside and use your cell phone or a public phone.

LawCrossing Career Advice

New associate at a large D.C. firm. After his first month there, a partner was looking over the phone call list, and found that the associate was spending two hours on the phone every day—talking to his mother, who lived on the other side of the country.

LawCrossing Career Advice

New associate at a Southern firm, heavily involved in the Junior League. The associate goes to the office manager and complains, 'My secretary spends too much time on the phone. Can you go talk to her?' When the office manager confronts the secretary, the secretary harrumphs, 'She should talk. She spends twice as much time talking about personal stuff than I do!' As the office manager comments, "Lead by example. Do your personal business behind closed doors!"

LawCrossing Career Advice

New associate, West Coast firm. Her family is in the Midwest. She tells herself, 'I work long hours. I'm entitled to make a few phone calls on the firm's dime.' She calls her family. At the end of the first two months, she gets a phone log. To her horror, it shows every single phone call she'd made—including the ones to her family. The firm makes her pay for her calls. As she comments, "All calls are accounted for at work. Somebody's paying for them. When you make calls from the office, they're not a secret. Everybody knows!"

Remember, you have no "reasonable expectation of privacy” on the phone. Ask Monica Lewinsky. Or Prince Charles.

Maybe you remember a few years back, the intercepted phone call, allegedly between Prince Charles and his lady friend Camilla Parker Bowles, which had him wishing to be reincarnated as— ahem—an item of personal hygiene associated with her. While I’m not worried about that happening to you, remember that phone calls do not come with guaranteed privacy. Watch out especially if the person you’re talking to has you on speakerphone. You have no idea who else might be in the room with them. You can just say something like, “I’m getting an echo here—can you pick up the receiver’” Problem solved.

Also, be aware that anybody could be walking by your office door and pick up a snippet of your conversation at work. So when you talk on the phone at the office, be discreet!

When you talk...

If you’re angry, don’t yell.

Fighting on the phone with anyone doesn’t make you sound professional. Keep your temper. Squeeze one of those frustration toys if you have to. Take a deep breath. Just keep your voice in check!

Speak clearly and politely, and smile!

It may sound silly to smile while you’re on the phone. Who can see it? But you should try it anyway. People can hear it in your voice, and if you’re looking for information from a supervisor, client, government agency or anyone else, you’ll get what you want a lot more easily if you sound friendly. The person you are talking to can’t see your new suit, smell your delightful cologne, or know your GPA or class rank. All they have is a voice and the word ‘lawyer.’ A few polite words and a professional demeanor will take you a long way.

The art of leaving messages

Don’t eat or—belch!—drink while you talk.

Munch munch—oh, sorry, I was just trying to squeeze in a bite. Don’t combine your fueling and message-leaving functions. It sounds really bad.

Leave fuller information than you think you have to.

The biggest complaint people have with voice mail is that callers make assumptions and don’t leave enough information. They may know several people with your first name. Also, they might not have your number memorized, or be near their phone book when they retrieve your message. So identify yourself completely, give your phone number, why you called, and when’s a good time to call back. ‘It’s Dorothy Dale, extension 666, I’m looking for the Toto file. Call me back as soon as you can.’ Good. Done

Don’t leave a message containing anything you don’t want anybody else to hear.

You leave a message for your colleague Julius Caesar, saying, “Caesar, I just can’t deal with that backstabber Brutus any more. Call me.” Caesar walks into his office to check his message accompanied by Brutus. Oops! The moral: don’t leave a message containing “for your ears only” information.

Handling your own voicemail

Change your voicemail message when you’re away from the office. And always be reachable (at least, during the week).

As an attorney with Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago advises, “Change your message when you’re not in, to reflect where you are, when you’ll be back, and how to reach you. If you’re not reachable, say so, and say who the caller might contact instead, like your assistant.”

Check your messages on weekends if there’s any chance whatsoever that somebody at work (or a client) might try to reach you.

That chomps, huh? As though tethering yourself to the office all week wasn’t enough! But the fact is, it’s a good idea to check your office messages at least once over the weekend, in case there’s an emergency. If you know there are partners who expect you to check your messages, you absolutely should do it. One junior associate said that “At my firm, there’s a partner who calls you at work on Saturday or Sunday, leaving a project to be completed by Monday morning. If you don’t check and he happens to leave you a message, you miss the Monday deadline.” Nice guy, huh? But you get the point. Check your messages.

Return calls promptly.

Whether the caller is your supervisor or a colleague or a client, you’ve got to get back on the horn with them ASAP. Try and do it within an hour; or at least, that same day. And if that's not possible—geez, do it as soon as you can. Believe it or not, one of the prime motivators of malpractice suits against lawyers is unreturned phone calls! You need to call at least to acknowledge that you got the call, whether or not you have the information the caller requested. And if your supervisor calls and asks you to do something, don’t just do it—also let them know you’re on it.

The Internet

When you use the Internet at work, remember that your employer can easily track your web usage. If you have to visit dirtypanties.com (I heard that there actually was such a web site), do it from home. And get professional help while you’re at it. At work, “‘Extracurricular’ web surfing constitutes a misuse of employer time and property,” says one attorney. Nobody cares if you scan the web for headlines or sports scores or stock quotes a few times a day, but other than that, save it for home.

It may be that you visit chat rooms for lawyers; some local bar associations have them, and I gather they can be pretty lively places to visit (not as lively as dirtypanties.com, but everything’s relative). As an attorney with Greenberg Traurig in New York points out, “If you comment about facts of a case in lawyer chat rooms on-line, be careful that you don’t reveal privileged information. There’s no expectation of privacy in an Internet chat room.”