Open records requests are a key to governmental transparency. Being personally subjected to one is unnerving.
How do you avoid such a request if you work at a public law school? You stay silent. Non-involvement with anything in the least bit controversial helps protect you from the possibility that anyone will ever ask to see the content of your emails.
I have often asked myself the theoretical question: if I had lived in Nazi Germany, or in the McCarthy era, would I have remained silent or would I have taken the risk and spoken up. That question is no longer theoretical.
The Law Firm’s Guide To Trust Accounting And Three-Way Reconciliation
Proper trust accounting and three-way reconciliation are essential for protecting client funds and avoiding serious compliance risks. In this guide, we break down these critical processes and show how legal-specific software can help your firm stay accurate, efficient, and audit-ready.
—Andrea A. Curcio, law professor at Georgia State College of Law, was one of 1,400 law professors who signed an open letter opposing the nomination of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. Her email, along with the email of colleagues working at public institutions, is being subjected to an Open Records Act request from a conservative political publication that seeks ‘a copy of each email (inbound, outbound, deleted, or double deleted) for the university email accounts of Andrea A. Curcio and [a colleague who also signed the letter] from the dates of December 15, 2016, to and including January 3, 2017, which includes any of the keywords ‘Sessions,’ or ‘Jeff Sessions’ or ‘Attorney General.’
[Gavel bang: TaxProf Blog]