Sending Email to Mark J. Welch

I currently respond to 90% of incoming email with "form replies," and I do not read ANY incoming email asking legal questions.

Disclaimers:

Warning: Electronic mail is not confidential. You should never send confidential or sensitive information by electronic mail (or by voice mail, fax, or ordinary postal mail) except in the following circumstances:

1. You have a pre-existing relationship with the person to whom you are sending the communication, and that person has a contractual or other legal obligation to keep the communication confidential; and

2. You have taken all reasonable steps to ensure that the communication cannot be intercepted (for example, you have verified that only the intended recipient can read the email or listen to the voice mail) and, in the case of email, you have encrypted the email so that a third person who intercepts it cannot read it.

For example, if you are seeking legal advice and you send email to an attorney whom you have not already retained, you may later discover that this attorney represents someone else in the same case, and the attorney has a duty to disclose your information to that client. Although communications between an attorney and client are confidential, your communication is not confidential if you are not the attorney's client or if your communication is made in a setting where others are likely to receive it.

You should recognize that electronic mail may be stored and forwarded through several computer systems, and it is possible that someone may (illegally) read your email and disclose it to someone.

Mark J. Welch does not provide free legal advice. Mark J. Welch is licensed to practice law only in the state of California; he cannot respond to inquiries regarding the law of other states. In addition, he currently limits his practice to the area of estate planning, probate, and trust law; he cannot respond to inquiries regarding other legal issues.

Don't rely exclusively on the internet to find an attorney. Very few attorneys, certainly less than ten percent, are active on the "Internet" or "World Wide Web." The best way to select an attorney is to ask friends, relatives, co-workers, and other people that you trust for referrals to attorneys they have worked with. However, as a courtesy, Mark Welch has compiled a list of U.S. estate planning, probate and trust attorneys who maintain a "World Wide Web" home page. See http://www.ca-probate.com/attylist.htm

Deadlines are extremely important in most legal matters. You may lose important legal rights if you do not hire an attorney immediately to advise you with your legal needs. Many people, including many attorneys, do not check their email daily, and some attorneys do not respond to unsolicited email from non-clients.

Note: My email program automatically deletes any incoming email from a "free email" account, unread. 90% of incoming email from Juno, Hotmail, MailExcite, Yahoo, and other "free email" accounts is unsolicited commercial email, and in any event I cannot review or reply to email which is anonymous. See also: "Second Class Netizens".