Today, e-mail is as second nature to most attorneys and law offices as
sending a letter or fax. Hardly anyone ever thinks twice about sending,
receiving or even thinking about the content they put into the average email
message. Most even think a step further and really think that an e-mail is
just like a conversation, i.e., once it’s over the conversation ceases to
exist.
However, as most attorneys will tell you, an e-mail is a discoverable
document that is legal evidence — to be used at any trial and for any
discoverable purpose. The thing that most of us seem to forget is that
email, unlike our conversation, lives on in time and, if not kept in the
proper prospective, the topic of the e-mail may be of such importance to a
case or cause that it becomes critical to our proofs in a matter. As a
practitioner of family law, I can attest to the fact that a case can be won
or lost when challenges are made to the truth and veracity of the statements
in an e-mail or e-mail’s date stamp. Many a spouse has been faced with the
explanation of the suspect e-mail in a court of law.
Attorneys should be aware that on a day-to-day basis, business, parties and
other lawyers continue to execute e-mails without any protections and
without a proper retention system of records to avert a tragic mistake.
Think for a moment of how one protects oneself from an original email that
was misquoted; or one that was never read or received in the first place?
Most say, “well I ask for a receipt.” Not good enough — a receipt can be
denied to the sender. What about actual challenges to the time and sending
of the e-mail? The list goes on and on, but the answers seem to elude you.
Just remember that with just a few simple mouse clicks, an original e-mail
can be changed and represented by opposing counsel to be the original
document. The protection of your evidence and legal document is more than
just mildly critical to your trial and situation, and the recent court
decisions on the matter have proven to be such that you must have a reliable
e-business system to keep proper records of these e-mails. No excuses!
Enter RPost, which over-simplified is stated as a registered e-mail
system for your firm. In actuality, RPost protects the sender with proof
of their entire e-mail transaction by providing a registered receipt
(which is legally valid evidence) that your registered email was sent;
that it was received and when that took place. It also verifies the
content of the e-mail message sent, including all the attachments!
If you think that RPost could not be the standard that your next trial
might just need, consider this: the Federal Government has tested,
approved, and accredited RPost, and they use it in the arm of Congress
known as the GAO (Government Accountability Office).
HOLDS UP IN COURT
As for legal opinions, most have already stipulated that RPost
Registered E-Mail service meets the federal and state laws with regard
to evidentiary proof that the e-mail has been delivered. And the
requirement that a document need be retained as originally created or
sent and received will now be able to withstand any and all legal
challenges with an RPost Registered Receipt e-mail.
So, you’re probably wondering, how does RPost do all this and what can I
get from it? Well RPost is a very simple and effective tool, which will
provide its sender with a complete and legally valid series of evidence
links, as to e-mail authorship, content, sending and receiving to any
e-mail address and a time stamp from the atomic clock. You get a digital
snapshot of the entire delivery transaction, including any and all
attachments, that is protected, compressed and placed into a
tamper-detectable Registered Receipt E-mail that you, the sender, get
back via e-mail. The recipient of the e-mail need not have any special
software on their machine to generate this item to the sender. Another
very intelligent feature about RPost is that it never retains a copy of
the original transaction, so RPost is not subject to discovery! Another
noteworthy item is the fact that if you desire, you may send the
registered e-mail without the recipient knowing that you sent it
registered, thereby not raising the eyebrows of your clients or opposing
counsel who may envision a distrust on your part, but at the same time
giving you the proofs you may need should the occasion rear its ugly
head.
On the computer of the e-mail sender, there is an automatically created
folder called “receipts” that the sender can archive according to his or
her preferences. This folder contains all the RPost registered receipts.
You can also send, additionally, the receipts to another e-mail address
for either permanent storage or backup, so that if you terminate an
employee, or they leave or they upgrade their computer system, you have
the copies of the receipts that you need. Also, if needed, you may tag
the e-mail with any type of identifiers, i.e., ID number, client number,
or a project number; these all allow for faster retrieval of the e-mail
that you may want to recover. You also have the ability to forward the
receipt to any individual who may dispute the delivery or content of the
e-mail that was sent, thereby allowing the person complaining to
authenticate the delivery or the content of the e-mail by forwarding the
Registered Receipt e-mail to a special address that will verify and
regenerate the original email and all attachments and then returns the
original information by email to the complainant. You even have the
ability to put the Registered Receipt e-mail on a CD and bring it into
the courtroom to allow the judge to authenticate the delivery and
content of any contested e-mail message.
CONCLUSION
I have been using RPost for all my e-communications to both clients and
attorneys and I find myself with more peace of mind about my e-mails or
the copies of agreements that I frequently send out for approval.
In the final analysis I have come to learn that there are many products
that come and go in the legal technology arena. Most are good, but then
once in a while some are really a tremendous boost to law offices’
productivity and peace of mind. If you do nothing in technology for this
new year of ’07 or if you can only make a few worthwhile purchases for
the office, I highly recommend that you use RPost Registered E-Mail for
all your most important e-mail communications. You will never be sorry
and you will only have praise for this time saving and worry-saving
element of your legal practice.
Alan Pearlman is an attorney, computer consultant and nationally
syndicated columnist. He is a member of ALM’s Board of Editors, and can
be reached at his Web site
www.theelectroniclawyer.com.To see a PDF version of the
review, click
here.
Click below to see article in
LAW.com:
