What is a good email boilerplate?

Email disclaimers added to the bottom of each external email sent from within your organization can help protect your company from liability. Consider the following scenario: an employee accidentally forwards a virus to a customer by email. The customer decides to sue your company for damages. If you add a disclaimer at the bottom of every external mail, saying that the recipient must check each email for viruses and that it cannot be held liable for any transmitted viruses, this will surely be of help to you in court.

Another example: an employee sues the company for allowing a racist email to circulate within the office. If your company has an email policy in place and adds an email disclaimer to every mail that states that the company is not responsible for the opinions of its employees, you have a good case of proving that the company did everything it could to prevent offensive emails. Here's the boiler-plate disclaimer at the bottom of all of my emails destined for external addresses:

"This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the sender immediately. Please note that any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Buy More Inc. Finally, the recipient should check this email and any attachments for integrity and for the presence of viruses. Buy More Inc. accepts no liability for any damage caused by this email."

I do it just like that too - smaller sans-serif letters in light-gray. As you can see, I've now got the whole thing down to just 91 words for the receipient to ignore. It's a good boilerplate because it is more or less as brief as possible, while still covering off all of the standard warnings and disclaimers:

• that the message is intended solely for the addressee.
• that action is requested if received in error.
• absolves the company of responsibility for the contents.
• and it absolves the company of liability for damages caused.

Of course, I could have gone to the extreme to shave off words:

"Let me know if this is not for you. Regardless, the contents are not my problem. Same if this message deletes your data."

23 words. I just can't get it any lower...