Managing your Email - IT Panel Article 2003

Corresponding by e-mail has become widespread, and e-mail traffic will increase over time. This will affect us all, because e-mails have to be stored, adding to IT running costs. It is now time to more fully understand:

In what ways e-mail is critical to the operation and further development of your practice.
How the e-mail infrastructure can be managed more efficiently and in line with the recommendations set out by the Bar.

We know that most e-mail infrastructures “fall over” more frequently than we think they should. It is when the system stops that you realise a high percentage of the daily e-mail traffic is critical to the efficient running of your practice.

However, you should not just be concerned about the system falling over. Other issues are just as pertinent, including:

Storing, archiving and managing e-mail and attachments.
Providing appropriate security measures to demonstrate care has been taken of client papers.
The location of anti-virus software to scan all e-mails that enter and leave the system.

Various rules, regulations, laws and forms of best practice apply to the e-mail system. Chambers should make themselves aware of these issues and consider suitable policies and solutions to demonstrate they have taken appropriate action. The IT Panel of the Bar are in the process of revising guidance on e-mail use in conjunction with the Law Society.

Regardless of the revised guidance, you should be concerned about the authenticity and integrity of the documents you send electronically. This is particularly important if a challenge is made over the authenticity or integrity (or both) of an e-mail or any document attached. This is because:

The printed version does not include the metadata. The metadata describes the record and each of the constituent parts of the document and its internal structure, and is not readily apparent in the original electronic document.
Often the printed version of the e-mail is not accurate, because information can be, and usually is, hidden.
There is often a conflict between an application and a device, such as the printer. This is a common occurrence, and the effect is to prevent data from being printed, such as the existence of attachments and text that may be underlined or in italic.

Instead of printing out copies and putting them on the file, it may be more appropriate to have a proper archiving system in place that stores every e-mail and attachment in such a way that both the content and metadata is captured with audit trails to prevent the message from being altered.

Various software providers have begun to address this issue. Two types of solution are available. The older response is based on the pure storage of electronic data, which stores e-mails for long periods of time, but tends to lack an audit trail or the ability to delete e-mails.

The new generation of software is more sophisticated. With superbly fast indexing systems, every change made to an e-mail leaves a tamper-proof audit trail, and some solutions are based on the relevant BSI “Code of Practice for Legal Admissibility and Evidential Weight of Information Stored Electronically”.