Did you hear the one about the junior associate who wrote a nasty email about his boss and, instead of sending it to his friend, he sent it to his entire law firm? This morning I was forwarded another one of those notorious emails, wherein a junior associate slams a partner, supposedly on the sly, only to have it publicized to his entire legal community. Ouch.

The moral of this story?

• Do not use your firm email account for personal emails or to disparage people you work with or for…ever. This includes clients.

• Be careful with the websites you are visiting and what you are writing on them while you are at work. Chances are someone is keeping track.

• Watch what you are saying over the firm’s phone, especially if you are being broadcasted on speaker phone. You never know who is listening…even to voicemails. I recently heard a story about a paralegal who thought she had hung up after leaving a professional message, using her speaker phone, for a senior associate. Lo and behold, she was still recording and proceeded to trash talk the senior associate to her colleague for a good four minutes until the system cut her off.

Call it reverse networking, if you will. There’s no better way to erect a road block in the road to success than to get caught bad mouthing your colleagues. Like my mother always told me, if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all….or at least be careful about who you say it to and how you say it….