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There is a reason there’s no [[Dewey decimal system|Dewey Decimal System]] for the internet. Though, bless them, someone tried. | There is a reason there’s no [[Dewey decimal system|Dewey Decimal System]] for the internet. Though, bless them, someone tried. | ||
There is a self-enforcing prioritisation method called "if no one hassles me about it, it can't be that important." After all, whose problem is it if you haven’t answered their email? This is especially good for filtering meeting requests. Best to keep people guessing whether you will show or not. Those who really care will call you. | |||
===As a means of serving close-out notices=== | |||
Has its time come? or ''gone''? | |||
*'''Good luck getting your client to agree it''': It may have taken coronavirus to open the legal eagle]]’s pirblind eyes to the virtues of email, but the market will still be slow to accept it. ISDA has always struggled with the concept, as we know, and inhouse lawyers being the creatures of habit that they are, you can see many of them just refusing email on principle. If one side won’t agree it, should the other? Is that’a great asymmetry to be exposed to? We think not. | |||
*'''Email is pretty rubbish really''': There are some good arguments against email: | |||
:*It isn’t secure, isn’t authenticated, is easily hacked, and there are no reliable “confirmation of transmission” mechanisms, as there are for closed systems like Swift, Bloomberg, and for that matter even WhatsApp or messenger, or even the dear old [[fax]]. This is the genesis of ISDA’s differentiation between “[[email]]” and “[[electronic messaging system]]” (in neither version of the ISDA does email count as an “electronic messaging system”) | |||
:*It is already on the way to becoming redundant technology – for many of the reasons above, and others. The fax went from exciting new thing you would use to send Gary Larson cartoons to each other to ''fossil'' in 15 years. Better, more secure, forms of electronic communication emerge every year. Backing email would be a bit like backing VHS in 1995. | |||
:*Bear in mind your internal governance around email address protocols in master agreements. There isn’t likely to be much. | |||
::*no individual email addresses, for any reason. Generic distribution lists only. but even these aren’t a silver bullet: make sure formal notification DLs are not and indeed cannot be deleted, and their membership is maintained through time by people in relevant roles - folks move around in big organisations. Ensure those employees are obliged to monitor emails even if they don’t otherwise use email (it is hardly out of the question that email could disappear as a form of communication in the next decade, as telex and fax has done) . To that end, have some facility for unilaterally withdrawing email as an acceptable means of communication on notice, or requiring counterparties to provide us with alternative communication means, should email stop “being a thing”. | |||
And don't forget the difficult cases in English law about email and ISDA – notably {{casenote|Greenclose|National Westminster Bank}}. The courts aren’t awfully reliable at this sort of thing, so there is some tail risk from bad decisions on service. | |||