The workplace and the e-mail trail

Ever wonder whether your boss can see what you write in your work e-mails? Companies large and small are monitoring employee e-mail, looking for everything from proprietary data leaks to cyberslacking.

E-mail and other electronic communications have dramatically changed the contemporary legal landscape. By some estimates, more than 90 percent of the cost of a lawsuit today can come from sorting through e-mails and other electronic documents to determine which ones are relevant to the case.

Ken Withers, director of judicial education at a legal think tank called The Sedona Conference, says that 20 years ago, a case that involved 300,000 pieces of paper was considered huge.

"That's considered a drop in the bucket today," Withers says. "The equivalent of 30 million or 300 million pieces of paper, if these were printed out, would not be unusual." More...