No, the point of such policies is so that if the company is ever gets sued and is subpoenaed for e-mails, the opposing counsel don't get to get in front of a jury and point to Joe Schmoe at the company writing 'Yep, I think we broke the law!'

This is standard employee training presumably not just at Google, but at basically every company I've ever worked for.

The rule goes basically: if you don't think what you write would look good on the front page of the NYT, then don't put it in an e-mail.

This sounds like somone brings up the email with "I think you are a moron" as an evidence in the psychiatric evaluation that the person is indeed a moron. If person thinks something they should be able to express that and have a chance to be corrected if they are wrong.

You must not have a great time on Twitter.

Well if you send it to legal and mark it client attorney privileged they have an argument from suppressing it in discovery.

Which can be argued against since you're not actually the attorney's client at the time of writing the e-mail, only the corporation is [1]. 'Some courts employ the Control Group Test whereby protection is available only to the corporation's controlling executives and managers.'

Doesn't seem like a risk a competent retained counsel would want to take, in any case.

[1] http://www.acc.com/legalresources/quickcounsel/acpfihc.cfm

According to the link, the control group test is diminishing in use, and if the employee has significant influence over the subject of the question (as a whistleblower or member of the team in question would), then they are in the control group.

The only way to really get screwed over by these tests would be to instate a "no emailing the lawyers about corporate wrongdoing" policy (causing your employees to fail all three tests in the link).

Of course, the lawsuit alleges that Google did exactly that. I wonder if the courts will (imho correctly) strip a large percentage of their internal legal communications of attorney/client privilege.

Time to grab the popcorn.

So I can't send an email that explains why I think X algorithm is slow and should be changed? Seems silly.

NYT: To the dismay of their employees, Google insist on using slowALGO, possibly costing them X sum.