One of the takeaways from Lessons From Touching a Hot Stove: Legal Edition , a webinar Brian Clifford and I recently did for CSIA, was the importance of sanitizing your employees’ e-mails. Integrators, as technically-minded as they are, typically don't think much about the effect of their correspondence until they find themselves on the business end of, say, a subpoena. But, like all lawyers, I like to be on the winning side—and what my automation clients put down in their e-mails can greatly affect whether a win (however you define that term) is even possible.
Here, in a nutshell, is the issue. Because what people are saying in correspondence and memos at the time the events are happening has great credibility, these materials are the focus of considerable attention if there is litigation. E-mails, in particular, are popular targets of lawyers because they tend to be more informal—and less well thought-out—than formal correspondence.
So, what's an automation company to do? I would ...