Publications

Four Words That Can End Your Career: How a Single E-Mail Can Lead to Criminal Charges, Civil Sanctions and Disbarment

Winter 2008
Bloomberg Corporate Law Journal

You are busy fielding a blizzard of e-mails. Perhaps you are responding to subpoenas concerning your firm’s holdings in structured investment vehicles, or revaluing a portfolio of collateralized debt obligations, or perhaps you are embroiled in the growing wave of subprime litigation. You may also be on the phone, or traveling, or on your blackberry. Or all three. Among your many e-mails is one from a subordinate that strikes you as ill-advised. You dash off a one-line response and are about to move on to the next message in the queue. Then you stop.