ROBO-LAWYERS! ROBO-LAWYERS! - National

Ethics
Éthique
E-mail confidential
Do those boilerplate confidentiality notices
really work?
You see them every day, but you
rarely read them. Originally,
those now-ubiquitous confidentiality
notices at the end of e-mail
messages were meant to guard against
lawsuits or discipline charges should the
contents of lawyers’ e-mails fall into the
wrong hands.
But today, hardly anyone notices
them — especially since they almost
always come at the end of the message,
bundled with the virus-scan announcement
and the sender’s e-signature.
“Lawyers include them because others
do it, and they don’t know whether
there’s any downside for doing it or not,”
says Paul McLaughlin, a partner at
Turning Point Law in Sherwood Park,
Alberta and a former practice management
advisor at the Law Society of
Alberta. But adding a confidentiality
notice to an e-mail does not in itself fulfil
your confidentiality obligations, he says.
“The steps you have to take depend
on the nature of the information,”
McLaughlin says. “Some information is so
sensitive that it should never be transmitted
by ordinary mail, let alone e-mail.”
Besides, there’s no guarantee that
identifying the message as confidential
and legally privileged will be enforceable
Courriels confidentiels
Les avis de confidentialité s’allongent. Est-ce
vraiment nécessaire?
Lisez-vous les avis de confidentialité apposés au pied des courriels?
Ces derniers semblent si habituels qu’on oublie presque
qu’ils existent.
Si la prolifération de ces avis relève de la prudence des juristes, certains
remettent en question leur efficacité. Rien ne garantit qu’un avis
de confidentialité, qui est rarement lu en pratique par le destinataire,
soit exécutoire contre un tiers ayant reçu le message par erreur. Pour
améliorer ses chances de résultat, Michael Whitt, associé chez Borden
Ladner Gervais à Calgary soutient que l’avis doit au moins contenir une
disposition à l’effet que le destinataire ne pourra invoquer le contenu
d’une telle transmission.
Au-delà de ces considérations, la simple insertion de l’avis de confidentialité
ne fait pas en sorte que l’avocat expéditeur ait respecté son
devoir de confidentialité envers son client. Encore faut-il bien évaluer la
nature délicate des informations transmises. Certains renseignements
against a third party
who receives the message
in error. By
including the statement,
the sender is
attempting to protect
herself from inadvertently
waiving any
rights. It’s not clear
that it will work.
“If it has to include a warning at all,
the disclaimer should say that if the message
is sent unintentionally, the recipient
cannot rely on its contents,” says Michael
Whitt, a partner and IT law expert at
Borden Ladner Gervais LLP in Calgary.
Whitt worries about the effectiveness of
appending the notice at the end of the
message — the strict legal view is that
notices are best featured up high, so that
the recipient actually takes note.
Typically, a notice will remind the
reader that the message is the property of
the organization — which is likely true,
but has little enforceable value against
third-party recipients. But at least the
sender is on notice that his e-mail messages
belong to the firm, which could
refuse him copies upon his departure
from the organization at a later date.
The important thing, says Whitt, is
that lawyers ask clients to agree
that by using e-mail, they are
waiving any claims arising from
the inherent insecurity of
online communications. “At
least put some onus on the
client that they may want to use
another channel of communication,”
he says.
Whitt also has concerns that
by including a blanket disclaimer
in every message, the disclaimers
are weakened. “Can you claim
you’ve exercised scrutiny and
Paul McLaughlin
diligence when both the grocery
list sent to your mother and a
confidential enclosure sent to a client
have a ‘privileged and confidential’ statement
appended?” says Whitt. “Often, I’ll
include a notice only when sending a sensitive
document.”
Blanket notices, if not specific enough,
also risk exposing lawyers to the consequences
of foreign laws. Take, for example,
the requirements imposed by the IRS that
limit the types of tax advice lawyers can
give in the U.S. To ensure compliance,
Whitt occasionally includes a disclaimer
that any U.S. federal tax advice cannot be
used for the purpose of avoiding penalties
under the Internal Revenue Code.
“If you don’t include that warning,
you may be running sideways of a foreign
jurisdiction’s regulations,” says Whitt.
The bottom line: he favours context-sensitive
disclaimers to fit the occasion. N
— Yves Faguy
ne devraient jamais faire l’objet de communications envoyées par la
poste, encore moins par courriel.
Selon Me Whitt, il est important de s’assurer que le client renonce
par écrit à toute réclamation qui résulterait de communications non
sécuritaires avec son conseiller juridique. Dans la mesure du possible,
faites en sorte que la responsabilité d’adopter un autre mode de communication
incombe au client.
Me Whitt met aussi les juristes en garde contre les avis passepartout,
particulièrement ceux dont le contenu est de nature personnelle.
Une utilisation abusive peut en diluer l’efficacité, affirme-t-il. Et si
l’avis est rédigé en des termes trop vagues, l’expéditeur risque de s’exposer
aux conséquences de certaines lois étrangères, notamment les
lois fiscales américaines visant à limiter l’étendue des conseils fournis
par les avocats en matière fiscale. La Circulaire 230, publiée par l’IRS
en 2005, contient des règles restreignant le pouvoir des avocats de
donner des conseils en matière fiscale. Selon les circonstances, il
serait avisé d’inclure une disposition à l’effet que l’opinion juridique
expédiée par courriel n'a pas pour but d'éviter des pénalités fiscales
américaines. N
— Yves Faguy
46 NATIONAL
OCTOBER · NOVEMBER 2006