Don't push that button!

The good folks at Gmail are very concerned about sending emails that shouldn't be sent.

Some months ago they announced "mail goggles" -- basically a pop math quiz that can be set to appear whenever you propose to send an email in the middle of the night (sadly, there is no equivalent application for telephones).

They've also come up with a "forgotten attachment detector" -- basically, when the text of your email says 'please see attached' and no file is, in fact, attached, this little feature asks if you might be forgetting something. This is something I've done from time to time: I'm trying to send a document... but I hit send before attaching it. I never used the Gmail option though: I just send another email. Usually with 'oooops' in the subject line. Colleagues or clients will accept this from me because I'm old. They figure they should be grateful that I no longer insist on using semaphore instead. Sometimes I still insist.

The latest geegaw offered for paranoid Gmail users is an "undo send" option. This tool is for those who push send and then realize -- yikes! -- the message has been sent to the wrong person.

These gaffes can be quite serious. Just last year, a Philadelphia lawyer intended to send an email about settlement negotiations in a big case to Sidley, Austin lawyer (and co-counsel) Bradford Berenson; the email was sent instead to New York Times reporter Alex Berenson. The Times (genuflection optional) ran a story about the possible billion dollar settlement -- a story which panned out earlier this year when Eli Lilly announced it would pay "$1.42 billion in a settlement and fines to resolve state and federal allegations that it illegally marketed its anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa."

Of course, even with this new "undo send" feature, an emailer has only five seconds to realize that a blunder has been made and push the button. The email might escape into the ether before the sender fully comprehends the error that has been made.

Better, perhaps, to rely on a consistent practice of checking everything before clicking "send." Better still, I think, to keep lawyers away from email, especially lawyers from big firms who had become accustomed to having underlings doing the typing and the sending.

I wonder if that guy in Philadelphia wants me to teach him semaphore....