Before You Send That Email...

How many times has an email sent in haste come back to haunt you? Well, it could get a whole lot worse: On Friday the Supreme Court approved a new law that requires companies to keep track of, well, everything employees produce electronically: email, documents, and even instant messages and voice mail, in the event a lawsuit is filed.

The idea: If someone needs to sue your company, you need to be able to provide any incriminating emails for evidence.

The rules do have some limitations: They apply only to federal litigation and generally come into play only after a lawsuit has been filed.

The rules are set to create massive headaches for companies not accustomed to archiving things like old emails. In fact, many companies routinely delete messages after 90 days and even make that a corporate policy that messages are not retained any longer than that. But with lawsuits dragging out for years, those rules will be superceded by the federal law. Also note that it doesn't matter how small your company is. Any entity brought before federal court is required to maintain the information.

Now the strange thing here is that the law does not state you have to maintain this information all the time. You only have to be able to produce it if you get brought before a federal court. So if you're routinely deleting info, you'll have to be able to turn on a dime in the event a suit is filed. (Of course, I'm not a lawyer, so please consult with counsel before you decide to flaunt the new law.)

Still, it's all very troubling to me. Archiving email and IM is bad. Can the requirement to archive telephone calls (as VoIP makes this easier) be far behind?