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:

• Its confidentiality
• Its copyright
• Its privilege (despite its protestations, misdirected emails will rarely be legally privileged)
• Its potential inaccuracy
• Its epidemiological virulence;
• The receiver’s moral duty to destroy it if sent in error.

It 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:

• • Professional advice;
  • An offer or solicitation of an offer — and IN ANY CASE NOT TO RESIDENTS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE;
  • 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”.)

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 ever 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?