e-Disclaimer is on sale now through February 2021. 50% off a fully compliant hyperlinked email disclaimer service.
17a-4’s e-Disclaimer is a hyperlinked email disclaimer service with a managed repository. Now and through February of 2021, all e-Disclaimer fees are discounted by 50%. e-Disclaimer provides the legal protection required for corporate emails, removes the burden to archival storage and drastically reduces erroneously flagged content during e-discovery.
Most companies have some version of an email disclaimer to protect their rights and responsibilities. Unfortunately, these disclaimers can prove burdensome to Compliance and IT when time is of the essence in response to an SEC or FINRA regulatory request for an e-discovery production. The language of the disclaimers, words like confidential, privacy, guarantee etc., can result in unnecessary flagging by regulatory supervisory systems increasing costs of legal reviews and e-discovery productions. All that flagged content is also being retained in an institution’s archive at a considerable cost. Disclaimers can often account for over 20% of archival space. A hyperlinked solution simply eliminates the flagging and retention of these items in the archive.
“Bottom line,” offers Charles Weeden, Managing Partner of 17a-4, LLC, “most email disclaimers will be thrown out as inadmissible in a litigation or regulatory matter. Most disclaimers have a generic link for the disclaimer such as xyzfinancial.com/disclaimer and there is no facility to prove that, at the time of an email, that a specific disclaimer was hyperlinked. Legal and compliance teams will periodically change the disclaimer language without an auditable and verifiable chain of custody for each specific disclaimer.”
Mr. Weeden continues, “Without a hash or other verification, the courts and arbitration authorities will not admit the disclaimer language resulting in no operative disclaimer for an email or electronic message.”
17a-4’s e-disclaimer provides:
- An independent hyperlinked email disclaimer service
- Full compliance with regulatory requirements including guidance Release Nos. 33-7856, 34-42728, IC-24426
- Legal defensibility for corporate emails and electronic messaging
- Authentication of each instance of a disclaimer and the dates that the disclaimer was linked
- Managed repository for multi-lingual and conditional variations
- Elimination of disclaimer language in an archive saving, in many cases as much as 30% of storage costs
- Reduced flagging of content either during supervision (FINRA 3110) or language during e-discovery searches
17a-4, LLC hosts all disclaimer links in a secure, Rule 17a-4 compliant archive using Microsoft’s Azure storage.
If necessary and as a further service, 17a-4, LLC provides its e-Disclaimer clients with expert witness testimony. If requested, we will provide the necessary verification of the integrity of the original disclaimer. 17a-4, LLC has appeared as an expert witness to the SEC in administrative matters related to email and messaging compliance.
For financial firms wishing us to capture their hosted messaging disclaimers, 17a-4, LLC provides a daily service to retain and preserve those disclaimers in accordance with SEC Rule 17a-4(f).