In November 2005 The Law Society published their E-mail guidelines for solicitors. The document is geared to helping law firms make sense of how to handle e-mails within the practice.
I have written a paper critiquing this document here.
It’s an odd document. For me, even though I do not work for a law firm, it makes absolute sense that all e-mails we sent and receive should be properly filed against a project (a “matter” in law firm parlance), but the guidelines from The Law Society allow lawyers to make a judgement as to which e-mails are filed. It also only talks about record keeping for a few clauses, giving the rest over to more classic AUP type topics.
Anyway, it is good that a professional management/guidance body is putting advice on managing e-mails out there. I feel it just needs to be a little stronger in what they advise.