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 Maryland
Bar Bulletin
Publications :
Bar Bulletin
Editor: W.
Patrick Tandy
May, 2004
| SOLO/SMALL FIRM PRACTITIONER |
Policies and Procedures for Office
E-mail Usage
~No Firm is Too Small to be Prepared and Protected~
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By Pat
Yevics
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I receive more and more
calls asking for some guidance on what rules or procedures solos and small
firms should have regarding the use of e-mail and Internet access for employees.
Unfortunately, most rules and procedures are not one-size-fits-all. Solos
and small firms should establish procedures and policies that are best for
their particular situations.
What I have presented
here are some issues that need to be considered if you are using the Internet
and e-mail and giving Internet access to your employees. They are questions
you need to ask to determine which direction you should take. There are also
some issues that you need to consider even if you do not have any employees
or partners in your firm. As with all policies and procedures, they should
be in writing, preferably in a loose-leaf binder or manual. All employees
should receive copies of the written procedures and policies. In addition,
all employees (even if there is only one) should sign off on receiving the
information.
All rules and policies
should be kept to a minimum, reasonable and easy to enforce. Bear in mind
that no policy should be established because of a problem with one employee.
E-mail
1. Decide how restrictive
you want to be when allowing employees to use e-mail. At a minimum,
it should be similar to your policy for using the phone. Since you do
not prohibit your employees from using the phone, it seems impractical
to completely restrict their use of e-mail for personal use.
However, you do need to
stress that there are some uses of Internet that will not be tolerated. With
the proliferation of spam and viruses, it is more important than ever to
use e-mail for work-related use and less for personal use.
If you have a domain name,
it is even more important to have rules for e-mail usage by anyone in your
firm. Every message that is sent by you or an employee using a firm e-mail,
in essence, goes out on your (the firm’s) electronic letterhead.
Your policy should indicate
that the use of e-mail should be primarily for business use. Although the
use for personal reasons is not prohibited, some types of e-mail are completely
prohibited. Some of these uses include the following:
- Do not allow forwarding
of jokes. While some of these jokes are amusing, you have no way of knowing
where they ultimately end up and who may be offended. Forwarding jokes
from the office e-mail is the same as sending them on letterhead.
- Do not allow the distribution
of chain letters.
- Do not allow the employee
to pass off personal views as representing those of the firm.
- Do not allow employees
to provide legal advice via e-mail.
- Do not allow employees
to use e-mail for any solicitation.
- Do not allow employees
to use e-mail for gambling pools.
- Do not allow employees
to use e-mail for religious or political causes.
- Although it should
go without saying, any messages that a reasonable person would find offensive
are prohibited. Any messages that contain messages of a sexual nature or
racial or ethnic slurs are prohibited.
- Do not allow employees
to use the office e-mail for confirmations for online purchases. You should
also consider prohibiting the use of office Internet for purchases
2. Require that
all employees (including you) have an electronic signature at the bottom
of all e-mail. Determine what should be included. It should only
be a few lines and should include the name of the person, firm name,
address, phone and fax. Do not make it any longer. Do not allow any anonymous
messages to be sent from your office. (For information on setting up
signatures with Netscape Communicator or Microsoft Outlook, please go
to the MSBA Website at www.msba.org and
click on LOMA.)
3. Decide what level
of privacy employees should expect. Will the employee have some
expectation of privacy or they have no expectation of privacy regarding
e-mail communication? Which ever you choose, make certain that all employees
understand the level of privacy. It would be best to put the policy in
writing and have employees sign the policy. This is especially important
if there is no expectation of privacy.
Regardless of the level
of privacy, all employees should understand that highly confidential messages
should not be sent via e-mail. Employees should also understand that deleted
messages are not really deleted.
There should also be a
policy regarding sending encrypted e-mail messages. Unless you have clients
who request to have messages sent using encryption, this should not be allowed
without permission.
4. Are you going
to allow employees to participate in work-related listserves? These
can be very helpful, but they should only be related to the legal profession.
However, it is important to remember that these employees represent your
firm. They should not be allowed to answer legal questions online or
provide confidential information about the firm.
5. Will all e-mail
messages be the property of the employer or will personal e-mail messages
belong to the employee and business-related messages belong to the employer?
6. Establish a policy
for deleting messages. There are not a lot of good reasons to
keep most e-mail messages longer than a few weeks. For any messages that
should be saved, establish a policy for creating folders for client messages
and saving the messages in the appropriate folders.
7. There should
be rules as to when you and employees should use e-mail to communicate
with clients and when you should use postal mail.
- For most solos and
small firms, e-mail should be used for informal communications with clients.
- You should not use
e-mail for time-sensitive messages.
- It is not a good idea
to use e-mail for discussions involving extensive dialogue.
- Use e-mail to streamline
communications. Use it for memos and short notes.
- Learn to use the attachment
feature and send files of a non-confidential nature to clients and others.
8. Do not open any
attachments without using virus protection software.
9. Always remember
that you should never put anything in e-mail that you would not want
to see on somebody’s bulletin board.
If you would like more
detailed policy information, please e-mail your name and mailing address
to pyevics@msba.org.
In addition, please go to the LOMA section of the MSBA website at www.msba.org for
policies and procedures on Internet access for employees.
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