Sending Unwise E-Mails Can Be Hazardous to Your Career

By Eron Ben-Yehuda

DAILY JOURNAL ARTICLE
Daily Journal Extra - Oct 11, 2004
http://www.dailyjournal.com
© The Daily Journal Corporation. All rights reserved.
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A recruitment manager in the United Kingdom lost a wrongful termination suit he filed after getting pink slipped for an e-mail in which he called a colleague a "grrrrrrrrrrrreat shag."

He sent the message to his manager, whom he felt he knew well enough to make the remark, which was intended as a joke. The manager's assistant saw the e-mail and complained.

To make sure that future attorneys don't make similar mistakes, USC Law is part of a growing list of law schools with legal writing programs offering instruction on the pitfalls of crafting unprofessional e-mails.

This is the first year the university has included the topic among the standard segments on properly preparing briefs, motions and office memos.

Attorney Martin S. Zohn, the managing partner at Los Angeles' Proskauer Rose, teaches a class of 18 students.

"E-mail is not the most important writing that they do," Zohn says. "But it can be the most dangerous."

To highlight that point, the first year students receive copies of actual e-mails sent from large law offices. Information identifying the senders and the firms is blacked out.

In a May 27 message addressed to "All San Diego," an associate leaving a firm refers to his office colleagues as a "group largely populated by gossips, backstabbers and Napoleonic personalities."

"In fact, I dare say that I would rather be dressed up like a piæata and beaten than remain with this group any longer. I wish you continued success in your goals to turn vibrant, productive, dedicated associates into an aimless, shambling group of dry, lifeless husks."

The class teaches that writing in anger is especially risky with e-mails because the messages can be sent and forwarded to others simultaneously.

What's more, the e-mails can be printed out and saved forever, something that people often overlook because they treat the messages as informal conversation, Zohn says.

In his message, the associate said he's quitting to become a "trophy husband."

He will have a hard time if he wants to re-enter the legal job market, says Jean Rosenbluth, the law school's director of the legal writing program.

"People are going to remember him and remember that e-mail," says Rosenbluth, a former assistant U.S Attorney.

In addition to a spell check, what e-mail needs is an "emotion check," Zohn says.

"Rarely does anyone use their emotions to their benefit," he says. "Lincoln used to put angry letters [he wrote] in his desk drawer overnight. [But] we don't really have the time for that."

A summer associate at a New York firm sent another instructive message June 2, 2003:

"I'm busy doing jack shit," the e-mail reads.

He mentions a two-hour lunch.

"Spent the rest of the day typing e-mails and bullshitting with people," he continues. "Unfortunately, I actually have work to do - I'm on some corp finance deal, under the global head of corp finance, which means I should really peruse these materials and not be a fuckup. ..."

The associate inadvertently hit the "Reply All" button. It ended up reaching about 40 people in the firm, many of them partners.

Compounding the problem, a few hours later, the associate sent out an apology that included misspellings and grammatical errors.

"It's like you have a sticker on your forehead that says, 'I'm sloppy,' and 'Don't trust me,'" Rosenbluth says.

The summer associate was not asked back to work there.

E-mail even embarrassed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, sued for libel by former stuntwomen Rhonda Miller, who claimed he had sexually harassed her. She brought suit after a governor's aide issued an e-mail directing reporters to a Web site that contained the criminal record of a prostitute with the same name.

In July, a judge dismissed the suit saying there was no evidence that Schwarzenegger knew about the dispatch.

Communicating with a client by e-mail is often unwise, the class instructs. The client is paying for professionalism. A correspondence on firm letterhead or a face-to-face meeting will convey more effectively that the client's business is taken seriously, a handout explains.

Also, reporting a problem by e-mail to a supervisor at work, rather than delivering the bad news in person, may make the sender appear to be trying to "hide," the course teaches.

Another lesson imparted is that confidential information can be shared too easily with those who shouldn't receive it.

"A lot of it is common sense," first-year law student Jason Gruenbaum says. But he finds the time spent on e-mail writing helpful. It instills some practical knowledge in a law school curriculum that's traditionally heavy on legal theory, he says.

"That would hopefully avoid learning by trial and error," Gruenbaum says.

Other schools, including Loyola Law School, also teach e-mail writing.

"It's an ever-increasing part of being an effective lawyer," Loyola associate clinical professor Susan Smith Bakhshian says. "This is a necessary skill now."