Law Newsletters Being Blocked by Spam Filters

The April 18 edition of Law Times has an article on page 2 entitled "Law firm newsletters blocked by e-mail filters".

Some of the country's largest law firms (including the one where I work and where I am in charge of publishing the newsletters) are reporting that the spam filters at the offices of their clients and mailing list subscribers are blocking their topical electronic bulletins.

Apparently, many of the more sophisticated spam filters automatically say Niet to bulk mailings or block messages that come with large attachments (such as PDF-formatted newsletters).

To get around this unforeseen problem, here is what some law firms have started doing:

• Osler Hoskin & Harcourt, Aird & Berlis, and Torys are sending out each piece of their mailings as an individual message.
• Some firms send out only an announcement containing a link back to the publication on the firm's website for viewing or downloading.
• Many companies now also have anti-spam filters that don't allow e-mails to get through unless the originating e-mail address is "pre-approved". One solution is to have recipients "whitelist" the law firms from which they wish to receive newsletters. "Whitelisting" means programming the spam filter to create an exception for a named originating server.