Legal Crap At The Bottom Of People's Email
I love when people send me e-mail with threatening legal language at the bottom -- almost as much as I love the asshats who e-mail to ask me for advice, and then have Earthlink send me a message telling me the advice I just wrote back to them, free of charge, won't be delivered unless I sign up to be white-listed. Ben Goldacre has the right take on the legal bullshit:
READ CAREFULLY. By reading this email, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. If you are anything other than a friend or an institutional professional colleague and you are writing to me about Bad Science stuff then it is reasonable to assume that I might quote our discussion in my writing, usually anonymously.
In some cases, that's not really fair. Working at a law firm, I have no control over the BS at the bottom of my email that I send to people outside the firm. It's automatically added by virtue of you not being an employee of the firm. We don't see it or have control of its addition. It's added by a program after we push SEND.
Now, there is a choice to use your work email for personal things, which I do not.
Nikki G at August 23, 2010 8:41 AM
Amy Alkon
https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/08/crap-at-the-bot.html#comment-1745675">comment from Nikki GI know, Nikki. It's just tacked at the bottom of any e-mail you get from anybody who works at a law firm or a big company. This is especially amusing when what they're sending is a link to fart jokes or near-porn.
Amy Alkon
at August 23, 2010 8:53 AM
In defense of the Earthlink spam filter, some keep it at the highest level and never get any spam. Unfortunately, this means that if they write to you and don't know the address from which you'll be writing back (as for example when one fills out a "contact us" form as opposed to actually sending an email), you'll get the spam notice. HOWEVER, those people will also be watching for your reply and will see it whether you 'whitelist' or not.
On the other hand, if they're writing directly to adviceamy(at)aol(dot)com, then they have no excuse for not okaying your address before you write back.
Steve H at August 23, 2010 11:31 AM
What especially annoys me about those legal footers is that many of them make claims on your communications as well (e.g. IP claims). And the senders, not understanding what conditions they're ostensibly binding you to, include information that you need to be able to use outside of the terms set forth in the footer - that they desire for you to use in that manner. Also the footers typically waive any commitments set forth in the email, but the sender still used the email to confirm commitments. So if the obligation is significant, you have to codify it more formally, which bogs things down, when it could have been handled with an email that didn't carry the legal disclaimers.
Legal Beagle at August 23, 2010 12:01 PM
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