Oftentimes, for my work, I give presentations that contain publicly available information that can be found anywhere on the net. But other times my presentations contain sensitive company or product information. For those presentations I always include three or four slides at the beginning of the presentation for all the legalese that our company attorneys say must be included.

But what do you do when sending emails that contain confidential information? Does your company have a standard “email disclaimer” message that you can append to your company sensitive emails or does your email client have an “add disclaimer to email” button?

Email disclaimers should be appended or prepended to all emails which may include company proprietary information that you don’t want shared outside of your company or shared by the company who has received your emails. Email disclaimers can also be included to state that you or your company is not liable for any unintended malicious actions as a result of your emails being sent or forwarded.

Having a disclaimer in your email is no guarantee that you or your company will not be sued for email contents or misuse. But having a disclaimer can still be shown as evidence in a court case that you did take some measure of precaution or forewarning when your email was sent.

Some of the situations where email can cause damage are the obvious ones such as viruses, Trojan horses or denial of service attacks disguised as attachments. 

Other damages that occur as a result of emails sent include broken confidentiality agreements, whether intentional or not. Damages can also occur when recipients receive emails from company personnel who make promises that can be interpreted as legally binding contracts such as when a technical or support person quotes a price for a service or product in an email to a customer. The technical or support person may not have the authority to quote prices but the customer might demand that the company honor the price quoted when it is to their advantage.

An email policy could state who is authorized to provide pricing for company products and services. Email filters could be set up so that any emails which include dollar amounts, dollar symbols or financial terminology are automatically appended or prepended with an email disclaimer statement. The email disclaimer could state something to the effect that all prices are subject to final company approval by an officer or department manager of the company.

It is obvious that companies must protect themselves from unnecessary lawsuits, especially easily avoidable ones. And a way to achieve this is by use of email disclaimers.