People Make Mistakes and Lawyers are People Too

Have you read the stories about partners at two firms and their mistakenly directed emails? I'm not sure why this is news, maybe it's a slow day in legal journalism land.

Check out the link above for the full story: "Well-known litigator Sheila Birnbaum of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom believed Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood used a press release and newspaper column to mischaracterize a recent confidential settlement with her client State Farm, and she said so.Her opinion was intended to circulate in an internal e-mail, but instead she sent it to more than a dozen reporters, the Associated Press reports.
“This is so over the top,” she wrote in the e-mail. “Can we ask that he be held in contempt of court for misrepresenting a settlement agreement and order of the court?”
Lawyers, you may want to consider deleting reporters' names from your e-mail address book. Birnbaum's misdirected e-mail is the second by a lawyer to make headlines this month. A lawyer at Pepper Hamilton in Philadelphia reportedly sent an e-mail referencing settlement negotiations that apparently involved Eli Lilly & Co. to New York Times reporter Alex Berenson. The message was intended to reach co-counsel Bradford Berenson of Sidley Austin.
A hat tip to the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, which posted the story."

Um, a hat tip? Maybe it's just me, but I really don't think that an honest mistake combined with some fairly innocuous email contents is all that interesting. Yes, there is a lesson to be learned (be careful, observe confidentiality standards, delete reporters from your address book and so forth) but does this rise to the level of being newsworthy?

What about journalists observing and honoring those disclaimers at the bottom of the emails?

People make mistakes. And lawyers are people too.

-Catherine