Email disclaimer

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A window into the soul of your correspondent (or, where harnessed to the great steampunk machine of a multinational corporation, that entity’s blackened soul). It can be long, or short; sombre or witty; comprehensive or general, but it will be there: the email disclaimer: an extract of text, appended to every outbound communication, canvassing any one or more of the following subjects:

What it is

• Its confidentiality — it won’t be: you don’t protect confidences by randomly emailing them to people;
• Its copyright — it might be, but the value is likely nil: the world is awash with emails just like yours;
• Its privilege (despite its protestations, misdirected emails will rarely be legally privileged)
• Its potential inaccuracy — a cute counterpoint to its value as intellectual property: “it is copyright, but probably bullshit anyway”;
• Its epidemiological virulence;
• The receiver’s moral — but (Law of Contracts 101 check: not legal) duty to destroy it if sent in error.

What it is not

A fulsome email disclaimer will also wax lengthily about what it is not: a subject, of course, on which any lawyer can joyfully extemporise for as long as there are cattle still out on manoeuvres:

• It is not professional advice (as if that won’t be dolefully apparent on its face)
• Nor is it an offer or solicitation of an offer — and IN ANY CASE NOT TO RESIDENTS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE;
• Nor a recommendation to do anything or not do anything (Stop and think about this juicy double negative for a while: “We are not telling you not to do anything”.) And what kind of person acts instinctively on as recommendation from an email anyway? (Don’t answer that: it is most of you.)

All of this served up in the certain knowledge no person having enough adult literacy to comprehend an email disclaimer would — or even could — be dim-witted or bored enough to read it, much less care about what it says.

Which begs the question: what do we think we are achieving with an email disclaimer? Which part of the sky would fall upon our heads were it not there?

See also

• This email and its contents are confidential and may be privileged