Fresh Reasons to Review The Company E-mail Policy

The recent decision for employee e-mail privacy and lawyer-client privilege by the New Jersey Supreme Court produced celebratory fist-bumps by groups ranging from the Employers Association of New Jersey (EANJ) to the National Employment Lawyers Association of New Jersey (NELA-NJ), the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey (ACDL-NJ), and the New Jersey State Bar Association (NJSBA). As noted in last week’s Cyber Risk Report, the justices ruled that an employee “could reasonably expect that e-mail communications with her lawyer through her personal account would remain private, and that sending and receiving them via a company laptop did not eliminate the attorney-client privilege that protected them.”
Only a few years ago, the case of Stengart v Loving Care might never have gone to court because most companies didn’t pay much attention to employees’ electronic communications except to avoid human resource department issues.  Today, corporations have cyber and insider risks to guard against, regulatory and compliance requirements to adhere to, and legitimate business concerns that make monitoring a necessity, not an option.  The risk of not knowing what employees may be electronically communicating has increased dramatically.