Law Firms and Language

Apologies to my readers (if any remain) for the unusually long interval between posts. The last two weeks were pretty crazy, work-wise, but I’m learning to fit more into my day, so things are looking up. To make up for radio silence, I bring you not one but two posts, clubbed together as a single post on the basis that they both qualify for the labels Law Firms and Language.

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My friend Sarbajeet works in a building just around the corner, and we often exchange emails in the course of the day. The emails are about trivial everyday things – forwarding discount coupons or making lunch plans. As such, they are typically quite short.

But we both work at law firms and we send these mails from our work IDs. I found it quite amusing that, on an email exchange which goes something like:

–Dinner at home?

–Think so.

the legal disclaimers and confidentiality notices tacked onto the emails by our two firms run to a combined total of 2437 characters.

* * *

On one of the transactions that I am currently working on, we exchange a flurry of emails with our clients everyday around noon, just as I am beginning to feel hungry. If this goes on, one of these days I’m afraid I’ll slip up and address an email to Merrill Lunch.