Electronic mail may not be confidential. You should never send
confidential or sensitive information by electronic mail except when you
have a pre-existing relationship with the person to whom you are sending
the communication, and that person has a contractual or other legal
obligation to keep the communication confidential, and you have taken
steps to encrypt the e-mail so that a third person who may intercept it
cannot read it. You should recognize that electronic mail may be stored
and forwarded through several computer systems, and it is possible that
someone may illegally read your e-mail and disclose it without your
knowledge or approval.
Do not provide any confidential information by electronic mail or voice
mail if you are not certain that it will be maintained as confidential.
If you are seeking legal advice and you send e-mail to or leave a
message for an attorney whom you have not already retained, you may
later discover that this attorney represents someone else in the same
case, and the attorney may have a duty to disclose your information to
that client. Although communications between an attorney and client are
confidential, your communication is not confidential if you are not the
attorney's client or if your communication is made in a setting where
others are likely to receive it.
Deadlines are extremely important in most legal matters. You may lose
important legal rights if you do not hire an attorney immediately to
advise you with your legal needs. Many people, including many attorneys,
do not check their e-mail daily, and some attorneys do not respond to
unsolicited e-mail from non-clients.
