On the list of things not to write in an e-mail is the following from a lawyer to his partners in a law firm in connection with a case he had:

I completely overlooked an important recent decision that dramatically changed the landlord-tenant law. (How I missed the case is a mystery since I read the advance sheets. Arguably the case is indistinguishable, but there is a $1M risk of malpractice if I am wrong . . . . I fell into the trap in a major way.)

The e-mail is recounted in a story in the Fulton County Daily Record (available on Law.Com here), and needless to say the clients are suing for — you guessed it right — malpractice.  The story is not about white collar crime, but it reinforces a point that, for some strange reason, many people apparently don’t think that e-mail exists and the contents of a message disappear when they hit the delete button.  Now, thank goodness blog posts don’t really exist either, otherwise my record as a prognosticator would be available for all to see (Scrushy will testify, Ebbers will not, etc.). (ph)