I’ve always been skeptical of the value of those lengthy paragraphs at the end of many email messages sent by professional firms that are meant to claim privilege, confidentiality and your first-born if you are the accidental recipient of the email and blah blah blah. Eric Cooperstein, at the Lawyerist, tells us why we’re right to be skeptical in an article he updated recently. He wrote:
In Scott v. Beth Israel Medical Center Inc., 847 N.Y.S.2d 436, 444 (2007), the court refused to find that a series of emails were privileged just because they contained a disclaimer that was found in every email sent by the plaintiff. Moreover, by overusing disclaimers and privilege warnings, lawyers are training the world to ignore them — which is precisely what we don’t want people to do.
